Find the maximum value of K such that sub-sequences A and B exist and should satisfy the mentioned conditions - string

Question

Given a string S of length n. Choose an integer K and two non-empty sub-sequences A and B of length K such that it satisfies the following conditions:
A = B i.e. for each i the ith character in A is same as the ith character in B.
Let's denote the indices used to construct A as a1,a2,a3,...,an where ai belongs to S and B as b1,b2,b3,...,bn where bi belongs to S. If we denote the number of common indices in A and B by M then M + 1 <= K.
Find the maximum value of K such that it is possible to find the sub-sequences A and B which satisfies the above conditions.
Constraints:
0 < N <= 10^5
Things which I observed are:
The value of K = 0 if the number of characters in the given string are all distinct i.e S = abcd.
K = length of S - 1 if all the characters in the string are same i.e. S = aaaa.
The value of M cannot be equal to K because then M + 1 <= K will not be true i.e you cannot have a sub-sequence A and B that satifies A = B and a1 = b1, a2 = b2, a3 = b3, ..., an = bn.
If the string S is palindrome then K = (Total number of times a character is repeated in the string if the repeatation count > 1) - 1. i.e. S = tenet then t is repeated 2 times, e is repeated 2 times, Total number of times a character is repeated = 4, K = 4 - 1 = 3.
I am having trouble designing the algorithm to solve the above problem.
Let me know in the comments if you need more clarification.

Answer 1

(Update: see O(n) answer.)
We can modify the classic longest common subsequence recurrence to take an extra parameter.
JavaScript code (not memoised) that I hope is self explanatory:
function f(s, i, j, haveUncommon){
if (i < 0 || j < 0)
return haveUncommon ? 0 : -Infinity
if (s[i] == s[j]){
if (haveUncommon){
return 1 + f(s, i-1, j-1, true)
} else if (i == j){
return Math.max(
1 + f(s, i-1, j-1, false),
f(s, i-1, j, false),
f(s, i, j-1, false)
)
} else {
return 1 + f(s, i-1, j-1, true)
}
}
return Math.max(
f(s, i-1, j, haveUncommon),
f(s, i, j-1, haveUncommon)
)
}
var s = "aabcde"
console.log(f(s, s.length-1, s.length-1, false))

Answer 2

I believe we are just looking for the closest equal pair of characters since the only characters excluded from A and B would be one of the characters in the pair and any characters in between.
Here's O(n) in JavaScript:
function f(s){
let map = {}
let best = -1
for (let i=0; i<s.length; i++){
if (!map.hasOwnProperty(s[i])){
map[s[i]] = i
continue
}
best = Math.max(best, s.length - i + map[s[i]])
map[s[i]] = i
}
return best
}
var strs = [
"aabcde", // 5
"aaababcd", // 7
"aebgaseb", // 4
"aefttfea",
// aeft fea
"abcddbca",
// abcd bca,
"a" // -1
]
for (let s of strs)
console.log(`${ s }: ${ f(s) }`)
O(n) solution in Python3:
def compute_maximum_k(word):
last_occurences = {}
max_k = -1
for i in range(len(word)):
if(not last_occurences or not word[i] in last_occurences):
last_occurences[word[i]] = i
continue
max_k = max(max_k,(len(word) - i) + last_occurences[word[i]])
last_occurences[word[i]] = i
return max_k
def main():
words = ["aabcde","aaababcd","aebgaseb","aefttfea","abcddbca","a","acbdaadbca"]
for word in words:
print(compute_maximum_k(word))
if __name__ == "__main__":
main()

Answer 3

A solution for the maximum length substring would be the following:
After building a Suffix Array you can derive the LCP Array. The maximum value in the LCP array corresponds to the K you are looking for. The overall complexity of both constructions is O(n).
A suffix array will sort all prefixes in you string S in ascending order. The longest common prefix array then computes the lengths of the longest common prefixes (LCPs) between all pairs of consecutive suffixes in the sorted suffix array. Thus the maximum value in this array corresponds to the length of the two maximum length substrings of S.
For a nice example using the word "banana", check out the LCP Array Wikipage

Answer 4

I deleted my previous answer as I don't think we need an LCS-like solution (LCS=longest Common Subsequence).
It is sufficient to find the couple of subsequences (A, B) that differ in one character and share all the others.
The code below finds the solution in O(N) time.
def function(word):
dp = [0]*len(word)
lastOccurences = {}
for i in range(len(dp)-1, -1, -1):
if i == len(dp)-1:
dp[i] = 0
else:
if dp[i+1] > 0:
dp[i] = 1 + dp[i+1]
elif word[i] in lastOccurences:
dp[i] = len(word)-lastOccurences[word[i]]
lastOccurences[word[i]] = i
return dp[0]
dp[i] is equal to 0 when all characters from i to the end of the string are different.
I will explain my code by an example.
For "abcack", there are two cases:
Either the first 'a' will be shared by the two subsequences A and B, in this case the solution will be = 1 + function("bcack")
Or 'a' will not be shared between A and B. In this case the result will be 1 + "ck". Why 1 + "ck" ? It's because we have already satisfied M+1<=K so just add all the remaining characters. In terms of indices, the substrings are [0, 4, 5] and [3, 4, 5].
We take the maximum between these two cases.
The reason I'm scanning right to left is to not have O(N) search for the current character in the rest of the string, I maintain the index of the last visited occurence of the character in the dict lastOccurences.