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Problem: Longest Happy String

Medium
30 min
Explore how to generate the longest happy string that contains only 'a', 'b', and 'c' without three identical consecutive letters. Learn to apply heaps for efficiently managing character counts and constraints, and practice coding this solution to develop problem-solving skills for technical interviews.

Statement

A string is considered happy if it meets the following conditions:

  1. It comprises only the characters 'a', 'b', and 'c'.

  2. It does not contain the substrings "aaa", "bbb", or "ccc".

  3. The total occurrences of:

    1. The character 'a' does not exceed a.

    2. The character 'b' does not exceed b.

    3. The character 'c' does not exceed c.

You are given three integers, a, b, and c, representing the maximum allowable occurrences of 'a', 'b', and 'c', respectively. Your task is to return the longest possible happy string. If there are multiple valid longest happy strings, return any one of them. If no such string can be formed, return an empty string "".

Note: A substring is a contiguous sequence of characters within a string.

Constraints:

  • 00 \leq a, b, c 100\leq 100

  • a+b+c>0a + b + c > 0

Problem
Ask
Submissions

Problem: Longest Happy String

Medium
30 min
Explore how to generate the longest happy string that contains only 'a', 'b', and 'c' without three identical consecutive letters. Learn to apply heaps for efficiently managing character counts and constraints, and practice coding this solution to develop problem-solving skills for technical interviews.

Statement

A string is considered happy if it meets the following conditions:

  1. It comprises only the characters 'a', 'b', and 'c'.

  2. It does not contain the substrings "aaa", "bbb", or "ccc".

  3. The total occurrences of:

    1. The character 'a' does not exceed a.

    2. The character 'b' does not exceed b.

    3. The character 'c' does not exceed c.

You are given three integers, a, b, and c, representing the maximum allowable occurrences of 'a', 'b', and 'c', respectively. Your task is to return the longest possible happy string. If there are multiple valid longest happy strings, return any one of them. If no such string can be formed, return an empty string "".

Note: A substring is a contiguous sequence of characters within a string.

Constraints:

  • 00 \leq a, b, c 100\leq 100

  • a+b+c>0a + b + c > 0