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Solution: Longest Happy String

Explore how to construct the longest happy string composed of 'a', 'b', and 'c' without three consecutive identical characters. Learn to apply the heaps pattern to prioritize character frequency, handle constraints effectively, and build valid strings. This lesson helps you understand constraint management with heaps, enhancing problem-solving skills for coding 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 ...