LeetCode 1750 Minimum Length of string after deleting similar ends || Day15 ||C++ ||Medium

Welcome to another exciting video! Today, we're diving into an interesting algorithmic problem involving strings. Imagine you're given a string s consisting only of characters 'a', 'b', and 'c'. Your task is to repeatedly apply a unique algorithm to s to minimize its length. Here's how the algorithm works:

Pick a non-empty prefix from s where all characters are equal.
Pick a non-empty suffix from s where all characters are equal.
Ensure that the prefix and suffix do not intersect at any index.
Delete both the prefix and suffix from s.
After applying this algorithm any number of times, you need to find the minimum length of s.

Steps to Solve:
🔹 Step 1: Initialize Variables: Start by setting two pointers, start and end, to the beginning and end of the string respectively.

🔹 Step 2: Iterate Through String: Use a while loop to traverse the string. Ensure that start is less than end and the characters at start and end are equal.

🔹 Step 3: Find Common Character: Identify the common character c found at start and end.

🔹 Step 4: Delete Prefix and Suffix: Delete consecutive characters equal to c from both the prefix and suffix. Move start to the next character in the prefix and end to the previous character in the suffix.

🔹 Step 5: Return Result: Once the loop ends, return the minimum length of the string after applying the algorithm, which is end - start + 1. If start is greater than end, the string will be empty, so return 0.

Get ready to dive deep into the world of string manipulation and algorithmic thinking! Let's get started! 🚀

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