3306. Count of Substrings Containing Every Vowel and K Consonants II

3306. Count of Substrings Containing Every Vowel and K Consonants II

Difficulty: Medium

Topics: Hash Table, String, Sliding Window

You are given a string word and a non-negative integer k.

Return the total number of Substring¹ of word that contain every vowel ('a', 'e', 'i', 'o', and 'u') at least once and exactly k consonants.

Example 1:

• Input: word = "aeioqq", k = 1
• Output: 0
• Explanation: There is no substring with every vowel.

Example 2:

• Input: word = "aeiou", k = 0
• Output: 1
• Explanation: The only substring with every vowel and zero consonants is word[0..4], which is "aeiou".

Example 3:

• Input: word = "ieaouqqieaouqq", k = 1
• Output: 3
• Explanation: The substrings with every vowel and one consonant are:
  • word[0..5], which is "ieaouq".
  • word[6..11], which is "qieaou".
  • word[7..12], which is "ieaouq".

Example 4:

• Input: word ="iqeaouqi", k = 2
• Output: 3

Constraints:

• 5 <= word.length <= 2 * 105
• word consists only of lowercase English letters.
• 0 <= k <= word.length - 5

Hint:

1. We can use sliding window and binary search.
2. For each index r, find the maximum l such that both conditions are satisfied using binary search.

Solution:

The problem requires us to count the number of substrings within a given string word that contain all vowels (a, e, i, o, u) at least once and exactly k consonants. We use a sliding window approach to efficiently solve this problem within the given constraints.

Key Points

• A substring must contain all five vowels (a, e, i, o, u) at least once.
• It must have exactly k consonants.
• The length of word is large (up to 200,000 characters), so an efficient solution is necessary.
• The solution uses sliding window and two-pointer techniques to optimize the counting process.

Approach

We use the idea of: Substrings with exactly k consonants = Substrings with at most k - Substrings with at most (k-1)
This allows us to count substrings with exactly k consonants efficiently.

Plan

1. Implement substringsWithAtMost(word, k):

   • Use two pointers (left, right) to maintain a window.
   • Track the last-seen positions of each vowel.
   • Expand the window while maintaining the condition: consonants ≤ k.
   • Count valid substrings when all vowels are present.

2. Implement countOfSubstrings(word, k):

   • Calculate the result as: substringsWithAtMost(word, k) - substringsWithAtMost(word, k-1)

3. Define isVowel($char):

   • Check if a character is one of "aeiou".

Let's implement this solution in PHP: 3306. Count of Substrings Containing Every Vowel and K Consonants II

<?php
/**
 * @param String $word
 * @param Integer $k
 * @return Integer
 */
function countOfSubstrings($word, $k) {
    ...
    ...
    ...
    /**
     * go to ./solution.php
     */
}

/**
 * @param $word
 * @param $k
 * @return int|mixed
 */
function substringsWithAtMost($word, $k) {
    ...
    ...
    ...
    /**
     * go to ./solution.php
     */
}

/**
 * @param $char
 * @return bool
 */
function isVowel($char) {
    ...
    ...
    ...
    /**
     * go to ./solution.php
     */
}

// Test Cases
echo countOfSubstrings("aeioqq", 1) . "\n"; // Output: 0
echo countOfSubstrings("aeiou", 0) . "\n"; // Output: 1
echo countOfSubstrings("ieaouqqieaouqq", 1) . "\n"; // Output: 3
echo countOfSubstrings("iqeaouqi", 2) . "\n"; // Output: 3
?>

Explanation:

Function: substringsWithAtMost($word, $k)

• Tracks last seen positions of vowels using an associative array.
• Uses two pointers (left, right) to define a valid window.
• Expands right while ensuring the window contains at most k consonants.
• Shrinks left when consonants exceed k.
• If all five vowels are present, we count valid substrings.

Function: countOfSubstrings($word, $k)

• Uses inclusion-exclusion to count exact k consonant substrings.

Function: isVowel($char)

• Simple function to check if a character is a vowel.

Example Walkthrough

Example 1

Input:

word = "aeioqq", k = 1

Steps:

• The only substring containing all vowels is "aeio", but it has 0 consonants.
• Since we need 1 consonant, no valid substrings exist.

Output:

0

Example 2

Input:

word = "aeiou", k = 0

Steps:

• The substring "aeiou" contains all vowels and 0 consonants.
• So, the result is 1.

Output:

1

Example 3

Input:

word = "ieaouqqieaouqq", k = 1

Steps:

• Possible substrings:
  • "ieaouq"
  • "qieaou"
  • "ieaouq"
• All three substrings contain all vowels and exactly 1 consonant.

Output:

3

Example 4

Input:

word = "iqeaouqi", k = 2

Steps:

• Possible substrings:
  • "iqeaouq"
  • "qeaouqi"
  • "iqeaouqi"
• These substrings contain all vowels and exactly 2 consonants.

Output:

3

Time Complexity Analysis

substringsWithAtMost($word, k)

• Each character is processed at most twice (once when right expands, once when left moves forward).
• This results in an O(N) time complexity.

Overall Complexity

O(N) + O(N) = O(N)
This ensures our solution runs efficiently even for large strings.

Output for Examples

echo countOfSubstrings("aeioqq", 1) . "\n";        // Output: 0
echo countOfSubstrings("aeiou", 0) . "\n";         // Output: 1
echo countOfSubstrings("ieaouqqieaouqq", 1) . "\n"; // Output: 3
echo countOfSubstrings("iqeaouqi", 2) . "\n";       // Output: 3

• Sliding window and two-pointer technique allow us to efficiently count substrings.
• The inclusion-exclusion principle ensures we get substrings with exactly k consonants.
• The O(N) time complexity makes the solution feasible for large inputs.
• Edge cases such as no valid substrings and long consecutive vowels/consonants are handled. 🚀

This solution ensures correctness while maintaining efficiency! 🚀 Let me know if you need further explanations. 😊

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1. Substring : A **substring** is a contiguous **non-empty** sequence of characters within a string. ↩