11(Jan) Longest substring with distinct characters.md

11. Longest Substring with Distinct Characters

The problem can be found at the following link: Problem Link

Problem Description

Given a string s, your task is to find the length of the longest substring with all distinct characters.

Examples:

Input:
s = "geeksforgeeks"
Output:
7
Explanation:
"eksforg" is the longest substring with all distinct characters.

Input:
s = "aaa"
Output:
1
Explanation:
The longest substring with all distinct characters is "a".

Input:
s = "abcdefabcbb"
Output:
6
Explanation:
The longest substring with all distinct characters is "abcdef", which has a length of 6.

Constraints:

• $1 <= s.size() <= 3 * 10^4$
• All characters are lowercase English alphabets.

My Approach

1. Sliding Window Technique:
   To find the longest substring with distinct characters, we maintain a sliding window that contains only unique characters. If a duplicate character is found, we slide the window forward to remove it.

2. Steps:

   • Use an array lastSeen to store the last seen index of each character.
   • Traverse the string using a pointer (end) to extend the window.
   • Use a second pointer (start) to mark the beginning of the valid window. If a duplicate is found, move start to ensure all characters in the window are unique.
   • Keep track of the maximum length of the substring during the traversal.

3. Edge Cases:

   • Empty or very small strings.
   • Strings with all identical characters.
   • Strings with all unique characters.

Time and Auxiliary Space Complexity

• Expected Time Complexity: O(n), where n is the length of the string. Each character is processed at most twice (once when extending the window and once when shrinking it).
• Expected Auxiliary Space Complexity: O(1), as the space used for the lastSeen array is constant (128 elements for ASCII).

Code (C++)

class Solution {
public:
    int longestUniqueSubstr(string &s) {
        int lastSeen[128] = {}, maxLength = 0, start = 0;
        for (int end = 0; end < s.size(); ++end) {
            start = max(start, lastSeen[s[end]]);
            lastSeen[s[end]] = end + 1;
            maxLength = max(maxLength, end - start + 1);
        }
        return maxLength;
    }
};

Code (Java)

class Solution {
    public int longestUniqueSubstr(String s) {
        int[] lastSeen = new int[128];
        int maxLength = 0, start = 0;
        for (int end = 0; end < s.length(); end++) {
            start = Math.max(start, lastSeen[s.charAt(end)]);
            lastSeen[s.charAt(end)] = end + 1;
            maxLength = Math.max(maxLength, end - start + 1);
        }
        return maxLength;
    }
}

Code (Python)

class Solution:
    def longestUniqueSubstr(self, s):
        last_seen = [-1] * 128  
        max_length = 0
        start = 0

        for end, char in enumerate(s):
            start = max(start, last_seen[ord(char)] + 1)
            last_seen[ord(char)] = end
            max_length = max(max_length, end - start + 1)

        return max_length

Contribution and Support

For discussions, questions, or doubts related to this solution, feel free to connect on LinkedIn: Any Questions. Let’s make this learning journey more collaborative!

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