- Difficulty: Easy
- Tags: LeetCode, Easy, Hash Table, String, Counting, leetcode-1370, O(n), O(1), Sort
Problem
You are given a string s
. Reorder the string using the following algorithm:
- Pick the smallest character from
s
and append it to the result. - Pick the smallest character from
s
which is greater than the last appended character to the result and append it. - Repeat step 2 until you cannot pick more characters.
- Pick the largest character from
s
and append it to the result. - Pick the largest character from
s
which is smaller than the last appended character to the result and append it. - Repeat step 5 until you cannot pick more characters.
- Repeat the steps from 1 to 6 until you pick all characters from
s
.
In each step, If the smallest or the largest character appears more than once you can choose any occurrence and append it to the result.
Return the result string after sorting s
with this algorithm.
Example 1:
Input: s = "aaaabbbbcccc" Output: "abccbaabccba" Explanation: After steps 1, 2 and 3 of the first iteration, result = "abc" After steps 4, 5 and 6 of the first iteration, result = "abccba" First iteration is done. Now s = "aabbcc" and we go back to step 1 After steps 1, 2 and 3 of the second iteration, result = "abccbaabc" After steps 4, 5 and 6 of the second iteration, result = "abccbaabccba"
Example 2:
Input: s = "rat" Output: "art" Explanation: The word "rat" becomes "art" after re-ordering it with the mentioned algorithm.
Constraints:
1 <= s.length <= 500
s
consists of only lowercase English letters.