Rearrange the string to maximize the number of palindromic substrings

Last Updated : 05 Sep, 2022

Given a string S consisting of lowercase characters(a-z) only, the task is to print a new string by rearranging the string in such a way that maximizes the number of palindromic substrings. In case of multiple answers, print any one.

Note: even if some substrings coincide, count them as many times as they appear in the obtained string.

Examples:

Input: s = “aabab”
Output: ababa
string “ababa” has 9 palindromic substrings: “a”, “b”, “a”, “b”, “a”, “aba”, “bab”, “aba”, “ababa”.

Input: s = “aa”
Output: aa
The given string has the maximum number of palindromic substrings possible, “a”, “a” and “aa”.

The problem might look to be a complex one but on solving for various cases and having observations will lead to an easy solution.

A simple solution is to sort the string and print it. Sorting takes O(N * log N). An efficient solution is to count the frequency of each character using a freq[] array and then construct the string using the freq[] array.

Below is the implementation of the above approach.

C++

   // C++ program to rearrange the
// string such to maximize the
// number of palindromic substrings
#include <bits/stdc++.h>
using namespace std;
 
// Function to return the newString
string newString(string s)
{
    // length of string
    int l = s.length();
 
    // hashing array
    int freq[26] = { 0 };
 
    // iterate and count
    for (int i = 0; i < l; i++) {
        freq[s[i] - 'a'] += 1;
    }
 
    // resulting string
    string ans = "";
 
    // form the resulting string
    for (int i = 0; i < 26; i++) {
 
        // number of times character appears
        for (int j = 0; j < freq[i]; j++) {
 
            // append to resulting string
            ans += (char)(97 + i);
        }
    }
 
    return ans;
}
 
// Driver Code
int main()
{
 
    string s = "aabab";
 
    cout << newString(s);
 
    return 0;
}
 
  

Java

   // Java program to rearrange the
// string such to maximize the
// number of palindromic substrings
 
 
public class GFG {
     
    // Function to return the newString
    static String newString(String s)
    {
        // length of string
        int l = s.length();
 
        // hashing array
        int freq[] = new int [26] ;
 
        // iterate and count
        for (int i = 0; i < l; i++) {
            freq[s.charAt(i) - 'a'] += 1;
        }
 
        // resulting string
        String ans = "";
 
        // form the resulting string
        for (int i = 0; i < 26; i++) {
 
            // number of times character appears
            for (int j = 0; j < freq[i]; j++) {
 
                // append to resulting string
                ans += (char)(97 + i);
            }
        }
 
        return ans;
    }
 
 
    // Driver code
    public static void main(String args[])
    {
           String s = "aabab";
            System.out.println(newString(s));
    }
    // This Code is contributed by ANKITRAI1
}
 
  

Python3

   # Python3 program to rearrange the 
# string such to maximize the 
# number of palindromic substrings 
 
# Function to return the newString 
def newString(s): 
 
    # length of string 
    l = len(s) 
 
    # hashing array 
    freq = [0] * (26) 
 
    # iterate and count 
    for i in range(0, l): 
        freq[ord(s[i]) - ord('a')] += 1
 
    # resulting string 
    ans = "" 
 
    # form the resulting string 
    for i in range(0, 26): 
 
        # number of times character appears 
        for j in range(0, freq[i]): 
 
            # append to resulting string 
            ans += chr(97 + i) 
     
    return ans 
 
# Driver Code 
if __name__ == "__main__":
 
    s = "aabab"
    print(newString(s))
 
# This code is contributed by Rituraj Jain
 
  

C#

   // C# program to rearrange the
// string such to maximize the
// number of palindromic substrings
using System;
class GFG
{
 
// Function to return the newString
static String newString(string s)
{
    // length of string
    int l = s.Length;
 
    // hashing array
    int[] freq = new int [26];
 
    // iterate and count
    for (int i = 0; i < l; i++) 
    {
        freq[s[i] - 'a'] += 1;
    }
 
    // resulting string
    string ans = "";
 
    // form the resulting string
    for (int i = 0; i < 26; i++)
    {
 
        // number of times character appears
        for (int j = 0; j < freq[i]; j++)
        {
 
            // append to resulting string
            ans += (char)(97 + i);
        }
    }
 
    return ans;
}
 
 
// Driver code
public static void Main()
{
    string s = "aabab";
    Console.Write(newString(s));
}
}
 
// This code is contributed 
// by ChitraNayal
 
  

Javascript

   <script>
    // Javascript program to rearrange the
    // string such to maximize the
    // number of palindromic substrings
     
    // Function to return the newString
    function newString(s)
    {
        // length of string
        let l = s.length;
 
        // hashing array
        let freq = new Array(26);
        freq.fill(0);
 
        // iterate and count
        for (let i = 0; i < l; i++) 
        {
            freq[s[i].charCodeAt(0) - 'a'.charCodeAt(0)] += 1;
        }
 
        // resulting string
        let ans = "";
 
        // form the resulting string
        for (let i = 0; i < 26; i++)
        {
 
            // number of times character appears
            for (let j = 0; j < freq[i]; j++)
            {
 
                // append to resulting string
                ans += String.fromCharCode(97 + i);
            }
        }
 
        return ans;
    }
 
     let s = "aabab";
    document.write(newString(s));
     
    // This code is contributed by divyeshrabadiya07.
</script>
 
  

Output

aaabb

Complexity Analysis:

Time Complexity: O(N)
Auxiliary Space: O(26)

Rearrange characters of a string to make it a concatenation of palindromic substrings

Striver

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Rearrange the string to maximize the number of palindromic substrings

C++

Java

Python3

C#

Javascript

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