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Solution: Longest Happy String

Explore how to create the longest happy string composed of 'a', 'b', and 'c' characters by applying the heaps pattern. Understand how to use a max heap to prioritize character usage while adhering to constraints that avoid three consecutive identical characters. This lesson guides you through the strategic approach and efficient implementation of this pattern to solve coding interview problems involving string construction.

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 ...