3208. Alternating Groups II

Problem

There is a circle of red and blue tiles. You are given an array of integers colors and an integer k. The color of tile i is represented by colors[i]:

colors[i] == 0 means that tile i is red.
colors[i] == 1 means that tile i is blue.

An alternating group is every k contiguous tiles in the circle with alternating colors (each tile in the group except the first and last one has a different color from its left and right tiles).

Return the number of alternating groups.

Note that since colors represents a circle, the first and the last tiles are considered to be next to each other.

https://leetcode.cn/problems/alternating-groups-ii/

Example 1:

Input: colors = [0,1,0,1,0], k = 3
Output: 3
Explanation:

Alternating groups:

Example 2:

Input: colors = [0,1,0,0,1,0,1], k = 6
Output: 2
Explanation:

Alternating groups:

Example 3:

Input: colors = [1,1,0,1], k = 4
Output: 0
Explanation:

Constraints:

3 <= colors.length <= 10⁵
0 <= colors[i] <= 1
3 <= k <= colors.length

Test Cases

1 2	class Solution: def numberOfAlternatingGroups(self, colors: List[int], k: int) -> int:

solution_test.py

import pytest

from solution import Solution


@pytest.mark.parametrize('colors, k, expected', [
    ([0,1,0,1,0], 3, 3),
    ([0,1,0,0,1,0,1], 6, 2),
    ([1,1,0,1], 4, 0),
])
class Test:
    def test_solution(self, colors, k, expected):
        sol = Solution()
        assert sol.numberOfAlternatingGroups(colors, k) == expected

Thoughts

3206. Alternating Groups I 的进阶版，k 从固定的 3 变成任意值。

直接按同样的方式做，时间复杂度是 O(n * k)。其中有很多判定是重复的。

假设已经找到一个长度为 k 的交替组，如果下一个 tile 的颜色跟当前组最后一个 tile 的颜色不同，说明整体右移一格依然是长度为 k 的交替组。否则就从下一个 tile 开始，重新找到下一个 k-交替组。

找 k-交替组的过程是一样的，记录当前已经符合交替要求的连续 tiles 个数，如果下一个 tile 跟当前组最后一个 tile 颜色不同，则 tiles 个数加一，否则从下一个 tile 开始重新计数。

利用 Python 负数下标简化边界处理。

时间复杂度 O(n + k)。

Code

solution.py

class Solution:
    def numberOfAlternatingGroups(self, colors: list[int], k: int) -> int:
        cnt = 0
        length = 1
        for i in range(2-k, len(colors)):
            if colors[i] == colors[i-1]:
                length = 1
            elif length < k:
                length += 1
                if length == k:
                    cnt += 1
            else:
                cnt += 1

        return cnt