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
NeetCode All. Last modified on September 7, 2026