AlternatingString | Topcoder Archive

Problem Statement

A string of zeros and ones is called an alternating string if no two adjacent characters are the same. Examples of alternating strings: "1", "10101", "0101010101".

You are given a String s. Each character of s is a '0' or a '1'. Please find the longest contiguous substring of s that is an alternating string. Return the length of that substring.

Definition

Class:: AlternatingString
Method:: maxLength
Parameters:: String
Returns:: int
Method signature:: int maxLength(String s)
(be sure your method is public)

Constraints

s will contain between 1 and 50 characters, inclusive.
Each character in s will be '0' or '1'.

Examples

```
"111101111"
```
```
Returns: 3
```
Among all substrings, there are 5 different alternating strings: "1", "0", "10", "01", "101". The one with maximal length is "101" and the length is 3.
```
"1010101"
```
```
Returns: 7
```
The string s itself is an alternating string.
```
"000011110000"
```
```
Returns: 2
```
Note that a substring must be contiguous. The longest alternating substrings of this s are "01" and "10". The string "010" is not a substring of this s.
```
"1011011110101010010101"
```
```
Returns: 8
```
```
"0"
```
```
Returns: 1
```

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