README.md

1170. Compare Strings by Frequency of the Smallest Character

Let's define a function f(s) over a non-empty string s, which calculates the frequency of the smallest character in s. For example, if s = "dcce" then f(s) = 2 because the smallest character is "c" and its frequency is 2.

Now, given string arrays queries and words, return an integer array answer, where each answer[i] is the number of words such that f(queries[i]) < f(W), where W is a word in words.

Example 1:

Input: queries = ["cbd"], words = ["zaaaz"]
Output: [1]
Explanation: On the first query we have f("cbd") = 1, f("zaaaz") = 3 so f("cbd") < f("zaaaz").

Example 2:

Input: queries = ["bbb","cc"], words = ["a","aa","aaa","aaaa"]
Output: [1,2]
Explanation: On the first query only f("bbb") < f("aaaa"). On the second query both f("aaa") and f("aaaa") are both > f("cc").

Constraints:

• 1 <= queries.length <= 2000
• 1 <= words.length <= 2000
• 1 <= queries[i].length, words[i].length <= 10
• queries[i][j], words[i][j] are English lowercase letters.

Solutions (Python)

1. Count

class Solution:
    def numSmallerByFrequency(self, queries: List[str], words: List[str]) -> List[int]:
        queries_cnt = [query.count(min(query)) for query in queries]
        words_cnt = [word.count(min(word)) for word in words]
        ret = []

        for q_cnt in queries_cnt:
            ret.append(sum(1 for w_cnt in words_cnt if w_cnt > q_cnt))

        return ret