Rearrange characters to make target string

Hash Table String Counting

61.1% acceptance

Feb 25, 2026

525

You are given two 0-indexed strings s and target. You want to create copies of target by taking letters from s and rearranging them. Return the maximum number of copies of target that can be formed by taking letters from s and rearranging them.

Solution

Rust

Time O(n)

Space O(1)

LeetCode

solution.rs

impl Solution {
  pub fn rearrange_characters(s: String, target: String) -> i32 {
    let mut s_count = [0i32; 26];
    let mut t_count = [0i32; 26];
    for b in s.bytes() { s_count[(b - b'a') as usize] += 1; }
    for b in target.bytes() { t_count[(b - b'a') as usize] += 1; }
    let mut result = i32::MAX;
    for i in 0..26 {
      if t_count[i] > 0 {
        result = result.min(s_count[i] / t_count[i]);
      }
    }
    if result == i32::MAX { 0 } else { result }
  }
}