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Abhishek Chaudhary
Abhishek Chaudhary

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Remove Outermost Parentheses

A valid parentheses string is either empty "", "(" + A + ")", or A + B, where A and B are valid parentheses strings, and + represents string concatenation.

  • For example, "", "()", "(())()", and "(()(()))" are all valid parentheses strings.

A valid parentheses string s is primitive if it is nonempty, and there does not exist a way to split it into s = A + B, with A and B nonempty valid parentheses strings.

Given a valid parentheses string s, consider its primitive decomposition: s = P1 + P2 + ... + Pk, where Pi are primitive valid parentheses strings.

Return s after removing the outermost parentheses of every primitive string in the primitive decomposition of s.

Example 1:

Input: s = "(()())(())"
Output: "()()()"
Explanation:
The input string is "(()())(())", with primitive decomposition "(()())" + "(())".
After removing outer parentheses of each part, this is "()()" + "()" = "()()()".

Example 2:

Input: s = "(()())(())(()(()))"
Output: "()()()()(())"
Explanation:
The input string is "(()())(())(()(()))", with primitive decomposition "(()())" + "(())" + "(()(()))".
After removing outer parentheses of each part, this is "()()" + "()" + "()(())" = "()()()()(())".

Example 3:

Input: s = "()()"
Output: ""
Explanation:
The input string is "()()", with primitive decomposition "()" + "()".
After removing outer parentheses of each part, this is "" + "" = "".

Constraints:

  • 1 <= s.length <= 105
  • s[i] is either '(' or ')'.
  • s is a valid parentheses string.

SOLUTION:

class Solution:
    def removeOuterParentheses(self, s: str) -> str:
        n = len(s)
        stack = []
        allowed = set(range(n))
        for i in range(n):
            if s[i] == '(':
                stack.append(i)
            else:
                curr = stack.pop()
                if len(stack) == 0:
                    allowed.remove(curr)
                    allowed.remove(i)
        return "".join([s[i] for i in allowed])
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