{"id":10058,"date":"2022-09-27T11:10:38","date_gmt":"2022-09-27T11:10:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.prepbytes.com\/blog\/?p=10058"},"modified":"2022-12-14T09:17:56","modified_gmt":"2022-12-14T09:17:56","slug":"delete-consecutive-same-words-in-a-sequence-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prepbytes.com\/blog\/delete-consecutive-same-words-in-a-sequence-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Delete consecutive same words in a sequence"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Problem statement<\/h3>\n

Given an array of strings<\/a>, if two consecutive strings are the same they will destroy each other. Your task is to find the number of remaining strings from the given array which do not get destroyed.<\/p>\n

Input<\/strong>: An array of strings.
\nOutput<\/strong>: Integer.<\/p>\n

Test cases:<\/h3>\n

Input<\/strong>: S = [\u201cprep\u201d, \u201cbytes\u201d, \u201cbytes\u201d, \u201cprep\u201d, \u201cdsa\u201d]
\nOutput<\/strong>: 1<\/p>\n

Explanation:<\/h3>\n

\u201cbytes\u201d at index 1 will get destroyed with \u201cbytes\u201d at index 2.
\nThen the array will look like [\u201cprep\u201d, \u201cprep\u201d, \u201cdsa\u201d].
\nNow \u201cprep\u201d at index 0 will get destroyed with \u201cprep\u201d at index 1.
\nHence, only \u201cdsa\u201d will be left after all the pairwise destruction. So, the output will be 1.<\/p>\n

Naive Approach<\/h3>\n

A simple approach can be to traverse the given array and if we found two consecutive strings, we will remove them from the array. We will continue this approach until all the strings are pairwise distinct.<\/p>\n

Code implementation<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t