How should I practice Clicked One-Dimensional Candy Crush?

Start by reading the full statement, solve the visible examples, then compare the pattern against related Bloomberg LP phone screen problems in FastPrep.

Is Clicked One-Dimensional Candy Crush associated with Bloomberg LP?

FastPrep tags this as a Bloomberg LP phone screen coding practice problem when the problem catalog has that company and stage context.

Clicked One-Dimensional Candy Crush

Bloomberg LP● MediumNEW GRADPHONE SCREEN

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Problem statement

Click the zero-based position clickIndex in gems. If its maximal equal-character run has fewer than three gems, return the original string.

Otherwise remove that run. Whenever the two exposed boundary runs have the same character and their combined length is at least three, remove the combined run and continue outward. Return the final string.

Function

clickCandyCrush(gems: String, clickIndex: int) → String

Examples

Example 1

gems = "ABCCCBBBBCCCBBAAAB"clickIndex = 5return = "B"

BBBB, then six Cs, then three Bs, then four As are removed in sequence.

Constraints

1 <= gems.length <= 10^5.
0 <= clickIndex < gems.length.