Problem Description
Given a string s, you need to partition it into one or more balanced substrings. A balanced string is defined as a string where each character occurs the same number of times. Your task is to return the minimum number of substrings that you can partition s into.
Key Insights
- A balanced substring requires all characters to appear with the same frequency.
- The problem can be approached by tracking character frequencies as you traverse the string.
- Whenever character frequencies become equal across all characters seen so far, a new balanced substring can be formed.
- The solution involves counting how many times the frequency pattern is repeated as you analyze the string.
Space and Time Complexity
Time Complexity: O(n), where n is the length of the string s, since we are processing each character once. Space Complexity: O(1), as we are using a fixed size array for counting character frequencies (26 lowercase letters).
Solution
The solution utilizes a frequency counter to keep track of the occurrences of each character in the string. As we iterate through the string, we update the frequency count and check how many unique frequencies are present. Each time we encounter a situation where all characters seen so far have the same frequency, we can conclude that we have found a balanced substring. We then reset the frequency counter and continue. The algorithm ensures optimal partitioning by minimizing the number of substrings.