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Weekly Contest 225: Change Minimum Characters to Satisfy One of Three Conditions
Here I will solve problems from Leetcode contests. Today we will do the Change Minimum Characters to Satisfy One of Three Conditions problem Weekly Contest 225.
Motivation to learn algorithms
Problem Statement
You are given two strings a
and b
that consist of lowercase letters. In one operation, you can change any character in a
or b
to any lowercase letter.
Your goal is to satisfy one of the following three conditions:
- Every letter in
a
is strictly less than every letter inb
in the alphabet. - Every letter in
b
is strictly less than every letter ina
in the alphabet. - Both
a
andb
consist of only one distinct letter.
Return the minimum number of operations needed to achieve your goal.