- Difficulty: Medium
- Tags: LeetCode, Medium, Hash Table, String, Counting, Prefix Sum, leetcode-1737, Greedy, O(m + n), O(1)
Problem
You are given two strings a
and b
that consist of lowercase letters. In one operation, you can change any character in a
or b
to any lowercase letter.
Your goal is to satisfy one of the following three conditions:
- Every letter in
a
is strictly less than every letter inb
in the alphabet. - Every letter in
b
is strictly less than every letter ina
in the alphabet. - Both
a
andb
consist of only one distinct letter.
Return the minimum number of operations needed to achieve your goal.
Example 1:
Input: a = "aba", b = "caa" Output: 2 Explanation: Consider the best way to make each condition true: 1) Change b to "ccc" in 2 operations, then every letter in a is less than every letter in b. 2) Change a to "bbb" and b to "aaa" in 3 operations, then every letter in b is less than every letter in a. 3) Change a to "aaa" and b to "aaa" in 2 operations, then a and b consist of one distinct letter. The best way was done in 2 operations (either condition 1 or condition 3).
Example 2:
Input: a = "dabadd", b = "cda" Output: 3 Explanation: The best way is to make condition 1 true by changing b to "eee".
Constraints:
1 <= a.length, b.length <= 105
a
andb
consist only of lowercase letters.