Partition Labels

Asked byAmazonGoogle

Problem

Given a string, partition it into as many parts as possible so that each letter appears in at most one part, and return the lengths of those parts.

Examples

Example 1

Input:s = "ababcbacadefegdehijhklij"

Output:[9,7,8]

Constraints

1 <= s.length <= 500

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How to approach it: the Greedy pattern

Make the choice that looks best right now, without reconsidering it later, and trust that a sequence of locally optimal choices adds up to a globally optimal answer. It only works when the problem actually has that property.

Look for this pattern when

Sorting the input by some key, then making one pass with simple local decisions, intuitively seems to produce the best answer.
The problem involves intervals, scheduling, or resource allocation where "always take the best available option" tends to work.

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Video walkthroughs

Original problem on LeetCode ↗