1. Problem
2390. Removing Stars From a String
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 <= 10^5
- s consists of lowercase English letters and stars *.
- The operation above can be performed on s.
2. Solution
I solved this problem like this.
- Using stack, the problem can be solved easily.
class Solution:
def removeStars(self, s: str) -> str:
stack = []
for x in s:
if x == '*':
stack.pop()
else:
stack.append(x)
return ''.join(stack)