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LeetCode 1963, Medium. Topics: Two Pointers, String, Stack, Greedy, Bracket Sequences. View on LeetCode. Generate this problem as a practice environment: tested reference solution, 28 parametrized pytest cases, and a playground notebook:

Problem

You are given a 0-indexed string s of even length n. The string consists of exactly n / 2 opening brackets '[' and n / 2 closing brackets ']'. A string is called balanced if and only if:
  • It is the empty string, or
  • It can be written as AB, where both A and B are balanced strings, or
  • It can be written as [C], where C is a balanced string.
You may swap the brackets at any two indices any number of times. Return the minimum number of swaps to make s balanced.

Examples

Constraints

  • n == s.length
  • 2 <= n <= 10^6
  • n is even.
  • s[i] is either ’[’ or ’]’.
  • The number of opening brackets ’[’ equals n / 2, and the number of closing brackets ’]’ equals n / 2.

Solution

Reference implementation from solution.py on GitHub, full suite in test_solution.py:

Complexity

Tags

NeetCode All.
Last modified on September 7, 2026