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1239. Maximum Length of a Concatenated String with Unique Characters

Description

You are given an array of strings arr. A string s is formed by the concatenation of a subsequence of arr that has unique characters.

Return the maximum possible length of s.

A subsequence is an array that can be derived from another array by deleting some or no elements without changing the order of the remaining elements.

 

Example 1:

Input: arr = ["un","iq","ue"]
Output: 4
Explanation: All the valid concatenations are:
- ""
- "un"
- "iq"
- "ue"
- "uniq" ("un" + "iq")
- "ique" ("iq" + "ue")
Maximum length is 4.

Example 2:

Input: arr = ["cha","r","act","ers"]
Output: 6
Explanation: Possible longest valid concatenations are "chaers" ("cha" + "ers") and "acters" ("act" + "ers").

Example 3:

Input: arr = ["abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz"]
Output: 26
Explanation: The only string in arr has all 26 characters.

 

Constraints:

  • 1 <= arr.length <= 16
  • 1 <= arr[i].length <= 26
  • arr[i] contains only lowercase English letters.

Solutions

Solution 1: State Compression + Bit Manipulation

Since the problem requires that the characters in the subsequence must not be repeated and all characters are lowercase letters, we can use a binary integer of length $26$ to represent a subsequence. The $i$-th bit being $1$ indicates that the subsequence contains the $i$-th character, and $0$ indicates that it does not contain the $i$-th character.

We can use an array $s$ to store the states of all subsequences that meet the conditions. Initially, $s$ contains only one element $0$.

Then we traverse the array $\textit{arr}$. For each string $t$, we use an integer $x$ to represent the state of $t$. Then we traverse the array $s$. For each state $y$, if $x$ and $y$ have no common characters, we add the union of $x$ and $y$ to $s$ and update the answer.

Finally, we return the answer.

The time complexity is $O(2^n + L)$, and the space complexity is $O(2^n)$. Here, $n$ is the length of the string array, and $L$ is the sum of the lengths of all strings in the array.

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class Solution:
    def maxLength(self, arr: List[str]) -> int:
        s = [0]
        for t in arr:
            x = 0
            for b in map(lambda c: ord(c) - 97, t):
                if x >> b & 1:
                    x = 0
                    break
                x |= 1 << b
            if x:
                s.extend((x | y) for y in s if (x & y) == 0)
        return max(x.bit_count() for x in s)
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class Solution {
    public int maxLength(List<String> arr) {
        List<Integer> s = new ArrayList<>();
        s.add(0);
        int ans = 0;
        for (var t : arr) {
            int x = 0;
            for (char c : t.toCharArray()) {
                int b = c - 'a';
                if ((x >> b & 1) == 1) {
                    x = 0;
                    break;
                }
                x |= 1 << b;
            }
            if (x > 0) {
                for (int i = s.size() - 1; i >= 0; --i) {
                    int y = s.get(i);
                    if ((x & y) == 0) {
                        s.add(x | y);
                        ans = Math.max(ans, Integer.bitCount(x | y));
                    }
                }
            }
        }
        return ans;
    }
}
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class Solution {
public:
    int maxLength(vector<string>& arr) {
        vector<int> s = {0};
        int ans = 0;
        for (const string& t : arr) {
            int x = 0;
            for (char c : t) {
                int b = c - 'a';
                if ((x >> b & 1) == 1) {
                    x = 0;
                    break;
                }
                x |= 1 << b;
            }
            if (x > 0) {
                for (int i = s.size() - 1; i >= 0; --i) {
                    int y = s[i];
                    if ((x & y) == 0) {
                        s.push_back(x | y);
                        ans = max(ans, __builtin_popcount(x | y));
                    }
                }
            }
        }
        return ans;
    }
};
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func maxLength(arr []string) (ans int) {
    s := []int{0}
    for _, t := range arr {
        x := 0