hardStringsPattern: Mixed
Minimum Edits for Palindromic Substrings Solution
Problem Statement
Given a string s and an integer k, determine the minimum number of edits (insertions or deletions) required to transform all substrings of length k in s into palindromes. An edit is defined as either inserting or deleting a single character from the substring.
Examples
Example 1:
Input:s = 'abcba', k = 3
Output:2
Explanation: Substrings of length 3 are 'abc', 'bcb', 'cba'. 'abc' and 'bcb' are not palindromes, each requiring 1 edit to become 'aba' and 'bab', respectively. However, 'cba' is already a palindrome. Thus, the minimum edits required is 2.
Example 2:
Input:s = 'aabba', k = 4
Output:1
Explanation: Substrings of length 4 are 'aabb', 'abba'. 'aabb' is not a palindrome and requires 1 edit to become 'abba', which is a palindrome. 'abba' is already a palindrome. Thus, the minimum edits required is 1.
Constraints
- 1 ≤ k ≤ 100
- 1 ≤ length of s ≤ 1000
- s contains only lowercase alphabets
Time: O(n*k) Space: O(1)
The optimal approach involves using a two-pointer technique to compare characters in each substring from both ends towards the center, counting the differences, and keeping track of the total minimum edits needed across all substrings, achieving a lower time complexity.
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