PatternFiller | Topcoder Archive

Problem Statement

You will be given two Strings pattern and letters, containing uppercase letters ('A' - 'Z'). pattern can contain also several '?', representing hidden characters. You are to return the lexicographically earliest string which can be derived from pattern by replacing each '?' character with a character from letters. Each character from letters can be used only once per occurrence in letters.

Definition

Class:: PatternFiller
Method:: fill
Parameters:: String, String
Returns:: String
Method signature:: String fill(String pattern, String letters)
(be sure your method is public)

Notes

If letters contains several identical characters, each of them can be used exactly once (see example 1).

Constraints

pattern will contain between 1 and 50 characters, inclusive.
Each character in pattern will be an uppercase letter ('A' - 'Z') or '?'.
letters will contain between Q and 50 characters, inclusive, where Q is the number of '?'s in pattern.
Each character in letters will be an uppercase letter ('A' - 'Z').

Examples

"AB??ACA?BA"

"GRAYCODE"

Returns: "ABACACADBA"

```
"??T?"
```
```
"SEASEA"
```
```
Returns: "AATE"
```
```
"A??A"
```
```
"BABA"
```
```
Returns: "AAAA"
```

"AB?SF?G??F???"

"ABACABA"

Returns: "ABASFAGAAFBBC"

"?NJOYTHECONTE??"

"TSE"

Returns: "ENJOYTHECONTEST"

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