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2390. Removing Stars From a String

Description

You are given a string s, which contains stars *.

In one operation, you can:

  • Choose a star in s.
  • Remove the closest non-star character to its left, as well as remove the star itself.

Return the string after all stars have been removed.

Note:

  • The input will be generated such that the operation is always possible.
  • It can be shown that the resulting string will always be unique.

 

Example 1:

Input: s = "leet**cod*e"
Output: "lecoe"
Explanation: Performing the removals from left to right:
- The closest character to the 1st star is 't' in "leet**cod*e". s becomes "lee*cod*e".
- The closest character to the 2nd star is 'e' in "lee*cod*e". s becomes "lecod*e".
- The closest character to the 3rd star is 'd' in "lecod*e". s becomes "lecoe".
There are no more stars, so we return "lecoe".

Example 2:

Input: s = "erase*****"
Output: ""
Explanation: The entire string is removed, so we return an empty string.

 

Constraints:

  • 1 <= s.length <= 105
  • s consists of lowercase English letters and stars *.
  • The operation above can be performed on s.

Solutions

Solution 1: Stack Simulation

We can use a stack to simulate the operation process. Traverse the string $s$, and if the current character is not an asterisk, push it onto the stack; if the current character is an asterisk, pop the top element from the stack.

Finally, concatenate the elements in the stack into a string and return it.

The time complexity is $O(n)$, where $n$ is the length of the string $s$. Ignoring the space consumption of the answer string, the space complexity is $O(1)$.

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class Solution:
    def removeStars(self, s: str) -> str:
        ans = []
        for c in s:
            if c == '*':
                ans.pop()
            else:
                ans.append(c)
        return ''.join(ans)

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class Solution {
    public String removeStars(String s) {
        StringBuilder ans = new StringBuilder();
        for (int i = 0; i < s.length(); ++i) {
            if (s.charAt(i) == '*') {
                ans.deleteCharAt(ans.length() - 1);
            } else {
                ans.append(s.charAt(i));
            }
        }
        return ans.toString();
    }
}

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class Solution {
public:
    string removeStars(string s) {
        string ans;
        for (char c : s) {
            if (c == '*') {
                ans.pop_back();
            } else {
                ans.push_back(c);
            }
        }
        return ans;
    }
};

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func removeStars(s string) string {
    ans := []rune{}
    for _, c := range s {
        if c == '*' {
            ans = ans[:len(ans)-1]
        } else {
            ans = append(ans, c)
        }
    }
    return string(ans)
}

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function removeStars(s: string): string {
    const ans: string[] = [];
    for (const c of s) {
        if (c === '*') {
            ans.pop();
        } else {
            ans.push(c);
        }
    }
    return ans.join('');
}

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impl Solution {
    pub fn remove_stars(s: String) -> String {
        let mut ans = String::new();
        for &c in s.as_bytes().iter() {
            if c == b'*' {
                ans.pop();
            } else {
                ans.push(char::from(c));
            }
        }
        ans
    }
}

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class Solution {
    /**
     * @param String $s
     * @return String
     */
    function removeStars($s) {
        $ans = [];
        $n = strlen($s);
        for ($i = 0; $i < $n; $i++) {
            $c = $s[$i];
            if ($c === '*') {
                array_pop($ans);
            } else {
                $ans[] = $c;
            }
        }
        return implode('', $ans);
    }
}

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