Given a string, find the length of the longest substring without repeating characters.

Example 1:

Input: "abcabcbb"
Output: 3 
Explanation: The answer is "abc", with the length of 3. 

Example 2:

Input: "bbbbb"
Output: 1
Explanation: The answer is "b", with the length of 1.

Example 3:

Input: "pwwkew"
Output: 3
Explanation: The answer is "wke", with the length of 3. 
             Note that the answer must be a substring, "pwke" is a subsequence and not a substring.

解析

此題給予一個字串s，要求找出其中最長無重複字元的子字串。難度為Medium。

使用暴力法的時間複雜度為O(N^3)，容易遇到TLE(Time Limit Exceeded)的情形。
若使用Sliding Window搭配HashTable方法來解決，則時間複雜度可降為O(N)，以下分別列出Java及Python的解法。

解法一(Brute Force)

public class Solution {
    public int lengthOfLongestSubstring(String s) {
        int n = s.length();
        int ans = 0;
        for (int i = 0; i < n; i++)
            for (int j = i + 1; j <= n; j++)
                if (allUnique(s, i, j)) ans = Math.max(ans, j - i);
        return ans;
    }

    public boolean allUnique(String s, int start, int end) {
        Set<Character> set = new HashSet<>();
        for (int i = start; i < end; i++) {
            Character ch = s.charAt(i);
            if (set.contains(ch)) return false;
            set.add(ch);
        }
        return true;
    }
}

解法二(Sliding Window)

public class Solution {
    public int lengthOfLongestSubstring(String s) {
        int n = s.length(), ans = 0;
        Map<Character, Integer> map = new HashMap<>(); // current index of character
        // try to extend the range [i, j]
        for (int j = 0, i = 0; j < n; j++) {
            if (map.containsKey(s.charAt(j))) {
                i = Math.max(map.get(s.charAt(j)), i);
            }
            ans = Math.max(ans, j - i + 1);
            map.put(s.charAt(j), j + 1);
        }
        return ans;
    }
}

class Solution:
    def lengthOfLongestSubstring(self, s: str) -> int:
        str_list = []
        max_length = 0
    
        for x in s:
            if x in str_list:
                str_list = str_list[str_list.index(x)+1:]

            str_list.append(x)    
            max_length = max(max_length, len(str_list))

        return max_length

備註

希望透過記錄解題的過程，可以對於資料結構及演算法等有更深一層的想法。
如有需訂正的地方歡迎告知，若有更好的解法也歡迎留言，謝謝。