Minimum Number of Swaps to Make the String Balanced

You are given a 0-indexed string s of even length n. The string consists of exactly n / 2 opening brackets '[' and n / 2 closing brackets ']'.

A string is called balanced if and only if:

• It is the empty string, or
• It can be written as AB, where both A and B are balanced strings, or
• It can be written as [C], where C is a balanced string.

You may swap the brackets at any two indices any number of times.

Return the minimum number of swaps to make s balanced.

Example 1:

Input: s = "][]["
Output: 1
Explanation: You can make the string balanced by swapping index 0 with index 3.
The resulting string is "[[]]".

Example 2:

Input: s = "]]][[["
Output: 2
Explanation: You can do the following to make the string balanced:

• Swap index 0 with index 4. s = "[]][][".
• Swap index 1 with index 5. s = "[[][]]". The resulting string is "[[][]]".

Example 3:

Input: s = "[]"
Output: 0
Explanation: The string is already balanced.

Constraints:

• n == s.length
• 2 <= n <= 106
• n is even.
• s[i] is either '[' or ']'.
• The number of opening brackets '[' equals n / 2, and the number of closing brackets ']' equals n / 2.

SOLUTION:

class Solution:
    def minSwaps(self, s: str) -> int:
        stack = []
        err = 0
        for c in s:
            if c == '[':
                stack.append(c)
            elif c == ']':
                if len(stack) > 0:
                    stack.pop()
                else:
                    err += 1
        return (err + 1) // 2

Comments

[Adeniran John Olukanni]

Found this helpful. Thanks for sharing.