[Devmates.co] Candy Crash 📈Bloomberg

Hello👋,
My name is Alex and I'm maker of Devmates.co. 😊

We are resolving daily coding problems which asked by top tech companies together. We share our solutions, give some help if anyone stuck, support each other and just hangout together in the internet. 🍻☕️💬

I get this problem from our members or just searching them in the internet(leetcode forums, Glassdoor, teamblind, etc.). Sometimes this problem can be very easy, sometimes too 👷‍♂️hard, everything depends on skills but we are trying to resolve all of them and Have Fun. 🙌

Today I want to share problem which was asked by 📈Bloomberg.

Problem:

Given a string, reduce the string by removing 3 or more consecutive identical characters. You should greedily remove characters from left to right.

Example:

Input: "aaabbbc"
Output: "c"
Why?:

1. Remove 3 'a': "aaabbbc" => "bbbc"
2. Remove 3 'b': "bbbc" => "c"

Input: "aabbbacd"
Output: "cd"
Why?:

1. Remove 3 'b': "aabbbacd" => "aaacd"
2. Remove 3 'a': "aaacd" => "cd"

Input: "aabbccddeeedcba"
Output: ""
Why?:

1. Remove 3 'e': "aabbccddeeedcba" => "aabbccdddcba"
2. Remove 3 'd': "aabbccdddcba" => "aabbcccba"
3. Remove 3 'c': "aabbcccba" => "aabbba"
4. Remove 3 'b': "aabbba" => "aaa"
5. Remove 3 'a': "aaa" => ""

Input: "aabbccddeeedcba"
Output: ""
Why?:

1. Remove 3 'e': "aabbccddeeedcba" => "aabbccdddcba"
2. Remove 3 'd': "aabbccdddcba" => "aabbcccba"
3. Remove 3 'c': "aabbcccba" => "aabbba"
4. Remove 3 'b': "aabbba" => "aaa"
5. Remove 3 'a': "aaa" => ""