# 3223. Minimum Length of String After Operations from collections import Counter """ you are given a string 's'. you can perform the following process on 's' any number of times: choose an index 'i' in the string such that there is at least one character to the left of index 'i' that is equal to 's[i]' and at least one character to the right that is also equal to 's[i]', delete the closest character to the left of index 'i' that is equal to 's[i]', delete the closest character to the right of index 'i' that is equal to 's[i]'. return the minimum length of the final string 's' that you can achieve """ class Solution(object): def minimumLength(self, s): """ :type s: str :rtype: int """ map, ans = Counter(s), 0 for c, cnt in map.items(): ans += 1 if not cnt % 2: ans += 1 return ans if __name__ == "__main__": obj = Solution() print(obj.minimumLength("abaacbcbb")) print(obj.minimumLength("aa"))