How should I practice Balancing Parentheses?

Start by reading the full statement, solve the visible examples, then compare the pattern against related Oracle online assessment problems in FastPrep.

Is Balancing Parentheses associated with Oracle?

FastPrep tags this as a Oracle online assessment coding practice problem when the problem catalog has that company and stage context.

Problem · String

Balancing Parentheses

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● Easy

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Problem statement

Given a string that consists of left and right parentheses, '(' and ')', balance the parentheses by inserting parentheses as necessary. Determine the minimum number of characters that must be inserted.

Function

balanceParentheses(s: String) → int

Complete the function balanceParentheses in the editor.

balanceParentheses has the following parameter:

String s: a string of parentheses

Returns int: the minimum number of insertions needed

Examples

Example 1

s = "()))"return = 2

Insert a '(' 2 times at the beginning of the string to make it valid: '((()))'

Example 2

s = "))(("return = 4

Insert 2 left parentheses at the start and 2 right parentheses at the end of the string to get "(()))(())" after 4 insertions.

Example 3

s = "(()))"return = 1

Insert 1 left paranthesis at the left end of the string to get '((()))'. The string is balanced after 1 insertion.

Example 4

s = "()()"return = 0

The sequence is already valid.

Constraints

1 ≤ length of s ≤ 10⁵