Redistribute Characters to Make All Strings Equal Python/Java solution

Both Python and Java implementations follow the same idea: count characters across all words and verify divisibility by the number of strings. Python often uses collections.Counter or a list of size 26, while Java commonly uses an int[26] array for counting.

How to solve Redistribute Characters to Make All Strings Equal in O(n)?

Traverse all strings and count the occurrences of each character. Let k be the number of strings. For every character, check if its total frequency is divisible by k. If any character fails the divisibility check, return false; otherwise return true. This single pass counting strategy achieves O(n) time complexity.

What is the best approach for Redistribute Characters to Make All Strings Equal?

The best approach is counting character frequencies across all strings. Compute the total frequency of each character and check whether it is divisible by the number of strings. If every character count is divisible, redistribution is possible. This runs in O(n) time with O(1) space using a fixed-size array for 26 lowercase letters.

Is Redistribute Characters to Make All Strings Equal asked at Google/Amazon/Meta?

String frequency and redistribution problems appear frequently in interviews at companies like Amazon, Google, and Meta. While this exact LeetCode problem may not always appear, the pattern of counting characters and validating constraints is a common interview concept.

What data structure is used in Redistribute Characters to Make All Strings Equal?

The solution uses a frequency counter implemented with either a hash table or a fixed-size integer array of length 26. Since the problem involves lowercase English letters, an array is typically preferred for constant-time access and minimal memory overhead.

What is the time complexity of Redistribute Characters to Make All Strings Equal?

The optimal solution runs in O(n) time where n is the total number of characters across all strings. Each character is processed once while building the frequency count. Space complexity is O(1) because the alphabet size is fixed (26 lowercase letters).

Description Hints 2 Solution Video 6:35

1897. Redistribute Characters to Make All Strings Equal

Q: Is Redistribute Characters to Make All Strings Equal easy or hard?

Redistribute Characters to Make All Strings Equal is classified as an Easy problem on LeetCode. The challenge mainly tests recognition of a counting invariant and basic string frequency manipulation rather than complex algorithms.

Easy67.0% acceptance1 company

You are given an array of strings words (0-indexed).

In one operation, pick two distinct indices i and j, where words[i] is a non-empty string, and move any character from words[i] to any position in words[j].

Return true if you can make every string in words equal using any number of operations, and false otherwise.

Example 1:

Input: words = ["abc","aabc","bc"]
Output: true
Explanation: Move the first 'a' in words[1] to the front of words[2],
to make words[1] = "abc" and words[2] = "abc".
All the strings are now equal to "abc", so return true.

Example 2:

Input: words = ["ab","a"]
Output: false
Explanation: It is impossible to make all the strings equal using the operation.

Constraints:

1 <= words.length <= 100
1 <= words[i].length <= 100
words[i] consists of lowercase English letters.

Asked at 1 company

MoEngage

Topics

Hints open one at a time

Hint 1

Characters are independent—only the frequency of characters matters.

Hint 2

It is possible to distribute characters if all characters can be divided equally among all strings.

6:35

Still stuck?Read 3 approaches, or watch a walkthrough.

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1class Solution:
2    def makeEqual(self, words: List[str]) -> bool:
3        

Starter codePython 3Spaces: 4

Examples

Case 1Case 2

Input

["abc","aabc","bc"]

Input

["ab","a"]

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