// 2957. Remove Adjacent Almost-Equal Characters #include "leetcode.h" /* * you are given a 0 indexed string 'word'. in one operation you can pick any * index 'i' of 'word' and change 'word[i]' to any lowercase english letter. * return the minimum number of operations needed to remove all adjacent almost * equal characters from 'word'. two characters 'a' and 'b' are almost equal if * 'a == b' or 'a' and 'b' are adjacent in the alphabet */ int removeAlmostEqualCharacters(char *word) { int n = strlen(word), ans = 0; if (n == 1) return 0; else if (n == 2) return abs(word[0] - word[1]) < 2 ? 1 : 0; for (int i = 0; i < n - 2; i++) { if (abs(word[i + 1] - word[i]) < 2) { if (abs(word[i + 1] - word[i + 2]) < 2) { ans++; word[i + 1] = ' '; } else { ans++; word[i] = ' '; } } else if (abs(word[i + 1] - word[i + 2]) < 2) { ans++; word[i + 2] = ' '; } } return ans; } int main() { char *w1 = "aaaaa", *w2 = "abddez", *w3 = "zyxyxyz"; printf("%d\n", removeAlmostEqualCharacters(w1)); // expect: 2 printf("%d\n", removeAlmostEqualCharacters(w2)); // expect: 2 printf("%d\n", removeAlmostEqualCharacters(w3)); // expect: 3 }