Practice Squarepoint Coding Question | Real Coding Interviews

Quick Summary

Find the smallest possible maximum consecutive identical character length after at most k flips.
Minimize the longest run of 'a's or 'b's in a binary string under a modification budget.
The feasibility of a target idleness value is monotonic, enabling efficient search over the answer space.

What This Tests

Binary search on answer space
Monotonicity property identification
Run-length analysis and greedy counting
Constraint verification under resource limits

Common Patterns

Binary Search on Answer

Sliding Window

Greedy

(This question is a variation of the LeetCode question 424. Longest Repeating Character Replacement . If you haven't completed that question yet, it is recommended to solve it first.)

A game renders shaders using two GPUs: GPU a and GPU b.

You are given a string s where:

s[i] = 'a' → the $i^{th}$ shader uses GPU a
s[i] = 'b' → the $i^{th}$ shader uses GPU b

The idleness of the system is defined as the maximum number of consecutive shaders that use the same GPU.

Test Cases

Input

Output

Expected