LeetCode //C - 71. Simplify Path

71. Simplify Path

Given a string path, which is an absolute path (starting with a slash ‘/’) to a file or directory in a Unix-style file system, convert it to the simplified canonical path.

In a Unix-style file system, a period ‘.’ refers to the current directory, a double period ‘…’ refers to the directory up a level, and any multiple consecutive slashes (i.e. ‘//’) are treated as a single slash ‘/’. For this problem, any other format of periods such as ‘…’ are treated as file/directory names.

The canonical path should have the following format:

• The path starts with a single slash ‘/’.
• Any two directories are separated by a single slash ‘/’.
• The path does not end with a trailing ‘/’.
• The path only contains the directories on the path from the root directory to the target file or directory (i.e., no period ‘.’ or double period ‘…’)

Return the simplified canonical path.
 

Example 1:

Input: path = “/home/”
Output: “/home”
Explanation: Note that there is no trailing slash after the last directory name.

Example 2:

Input: path = “/…/”
Output: “/”
Explanation: Going one level up from the root directory is a no-op, as the root level is the highest level you can go.

Example 3:

Input: path = “/home//foo/”
Output: “/home/foo”
Explanation: In the canonical path, multiple consecutive slashes are replaced by a single one.

Constraints:

• 1 <= path.length <= 3000
• path consists of English letters, digits, period ‘.’, slash ‘/’ or ‘_’.
• path is a valid absolute Unix path.

From: LeetCode
Link: 71. Simplify Path

---

Solution:

Ideas：

To simplify the path, we can use a stack-like approach to process each directory and file in the path. Here’s the approach:

1. Split the path into tokens using the slash (‘/’) as a delimiter.
2. For each token:

• If it’s “…”, pop a directory from the stack (if any).
• If it’s “.” or an empty string, continue to the next token.
• Otherwise, push the token onto the stack.

3. Construct the simplified path by joining the stack contents with slashes.
4. If the resulting path is empty, return the root (“/”).

Code:

char * simplifyPath(char * path) {
    
    
    char *tokens[3000];   // max path length is 3000
    int top = -1;

    char *token = strtok(path, "/");
    while (token != NULL) {
    
    
        if (strcmp(token, "..") == 0) {
    
    
            // Move one directory up if possible
            if (top >= 0) top--;
        } else if (strcmp(token, ".") != 0 && strcmp(token, "") != 0) {
    
    
            // A valid directory or file name
            tokens[++top] = token;
        }
        token = strtok(NULL, "/");
    }

    char *result = (char *)malloc(3000 * sizeof(char));
    char *cursor = result;
    for (int i = 0; i <= top; i++) {
    
    
        int len = strlen(tokens[i]);
        *cursor++ = '/';
        strncpy(cursor, tokens[i], len);
        cursor += len;
    }
    *cursor = '\0';

    // If the result is empty, return the root
    if (*result == '\0') {
    
    
        free(result);
        return strdup("/");
    }
    return result;
}