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Solution: Minimum Number of Moves to Make Palindrome

Explore how to solve the problem of converting a string into a palindrome with the fewest adjacent swaps by applying the two pointers approach. Understand how to efficiently match characters from the ends toward the center, manage odd-length palindromes, and analyze the solution's time and space complexities.

Statement

Given a string s, return the minimum number of moves required to transform s into a palindrome. In each move, you can swap any two adjacent characters in s.

Note: The input string is guaranteed to be convertible into a palindrome.

Constraints:

  • 00 \le s.length 2000\le 2000

  • s consists of only lowercase English letters.

  • s is guaranteed to be converted into a palindrome in a finite number of moves.

Solution

The main strategy for solving this problem is to use a two-pointer approach to progressively match characters from the outer ends of the string toward the center, while minimizing adjacent swaps to transform the string into a palindrome. For each character on the left side, the algorithm searches for its matching counterpart on the right side and moves it into place by repeatedly swapping adjacent ...