Grokking Data Structures & Algorithms for Coding Interviews
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Remove Duplicate Letters (medium)
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Problem Statement

Given a string s, remove all duplicate letters from the input string while maintaining the original order of the letters.

Additionally, the returned string should be the smallest in lexicographical order among all possible results.

A string is in the smallest lexicographical order if it appears first in a dictionary. For example, "abc" is smaller than "acb" because "abc" comes first alphabetically.

Examples:

    • Input: "babac"
    • Expected Output: "abc"
    • Justification:
      • After removing 1 b and 1 a from the input string, we can get bac, and abc strings. The final answer is 'abc', which is the smallest lexicographical string without duplicate letters.
    • Input: "zabccde"
    • Expected Output: "zabcde"
    • Justification: Removing one of the 'c's forms 'zabcde', the smallest string in lexicographical order without duplicates.
    • Input: "mnopmn"
    • Expected Output: "mnop"
    • Justification: Removing the second 'm' and 'n' gives 'mnop', which is the smallest possible string without duplicate characters.

Constraints:

  • 1 <= s.length <= 10<sup>4</sup>
  • s consists of lowercase English letters.

Try it yourself

Try solving this question here:

Python3
Python3
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