Microsoft Online Assessment (OA) - Day of the week that is K days later

Given a string S, returns the maximum number of letters a that can be inserted into S (including at the front and end of S) so that the resulting string doesn’t contain three consecutive letters a. If string S already contains the substring aaa, then your function should return -1.

Example 1:

Input: aabab

Output: 3

Explanation:

A string aabaabaa can be made

Example 2:

Input: dog

Output: 8

Explanation:

A string aadaaoaagaa can be made

Example 3:

Input: aa

Output: 0

Explanation:

No longer string can be made.

Example 4:

Input: baaaa

Output: -1

Explanation:

There is a substring aaa

Try it yourself

Implementation

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from itertools import groupby
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def maxInserts(s):
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    # WRITE YOUR BRILLIANT CODE HERE
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    ans, last = 0, '#'
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    for c, g in groupby(s):
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        L = len(list(g))
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          if c == 'a':
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              if L < 3:
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                  ans += 2 - L
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              else:
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                  return -1
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        else:
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            ans += 2 * (L - (last == 'a'))
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        last = c
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    ans += 2 * (s[-1] != 'a')
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    return ans
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if __name__ == '__main__':
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    print(maxInserts(input()))