Problem - Leetcode

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

Example 1:

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

Example 2:

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

Example 3:

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

Constraints:

• 0 <= s.length <= 5 * 10<sup>4</sup>

• s consists of English letters, digits, symbols and spaces.

Answer-1 in Golang

func lengthOfLongestSubstring(s string) int {
    charSet := make(map[byte]bool)
    l := 0
    res := 0 
    for r, _ := range s {
        for charSet[s[r]] {
            delete(charSet,s[l])
            l++
        }
        charSet[s[r]] = true
        res = max(res, r-l+1)
    }
    return res
}
func max(a,b int) int {
    if a > b{
        return a
    }
    return b
}

This code defines a function lengthOfLongestSubstring that takes a string s as input and calculates the length of the longest substring within that string, where all characters in the substring are unique. Let's break down the code step by step:

1. charSet := make(map[byte]bool): This line initializes an empty map called charSet, which will be used to keep track of characters encountered in the current substring.

2. l := 0: This initializes a variable l (short for "left") to 0. It represents the left pointer of the current substring.

3. res := 0: This initializes a variable res (short for "result") to 0. It will store the length of the longest substring found.

4. The first for loop iterates over the characters in the input string s. It uses two variables, r and _, where r represents the current position (right pointer) in the string.

5. Inside the first loop, there's another loop: for charSet[s[r]]. This loop checks whether the current character s[r] is already present in the charSet map. If it is, that means the current character is a repeating character, so the algorithm needs to shrink the substring by moving the left pointer (l) to the right until the repeated character is removed from the substring.

6. Inside the inner loop, delete(charSet, s[l]) removes the character at the l position from the charSet map, effectively shifting the left pointer to the right.

7. After the inner loop, charSet[s[r]] = true adds the current character to the charSet map, indicating its presence in the current substring.

8. res = max(res, r-l+1): This calculates the length of the current substring (from l to r) and compares it to the current maximum length stored in res. Whichever is greater becomes the new value of res.

9. The function max(a, b int) is defined to return the maximum of two integers a and b.

10. Finally, the function returns the value of res, which represents the length of the longest substring with unique characters.

In summary, this code uses a sliding window approach to find the longest substring without repeating characters within the given input string s. The charSet map keeps track of characters in the current substring, and the left and right pointers (l and r) control the window boundaries. The result is stored in the res variable and returned at the end.