Leetcode - Remove Sub-Folders from the Filesystem Solution

Given a list of folders, remove all sub-folders in those folders and return in any order the folders after removing.

If a folder[i] is located within another folder[j], it is called a sub-folder of it.

The format of a path is one or more concatenated strings of the form: / followed by one or more lowercase English letters. For example, /leetcode and /leetcode/problems are valid paths while an empty string and / are not.

Example 1:

Input: folder = ["/a","/a/b","/c/d","/c/d/e","/c/f"]
Output: ["/a","/c/d","/c/f"]
Explanation: Folders "/a/b/" is a subfolder of "/a" and "/c/d/e" is inside of folder "/c/d" in our filesystem.

Example 2:

Input: folder = ["/a","/a/b/c","/a/b/d"]
Output: ["/a"]
Explanation: Folders "/a/b/c" and "/a/b/d/" will be removed because they are subfolders of "/a".

Example 3:

Input: folder = ["/a/b/c","/a/b/ca","/a/b/d"]
Output: ["/a/b/c","/a/b/ca","/a/b/d"]

Constraints:

• 1 <= folder.length <= 4 * 10^4
• 2 <= folder[i].length <= 100
• folder[i] contains only lowercase letters and '/'
• folder[i] always starts with character '/'
• Each folder name is unique.

Solution in Python

class Solution:
    @staticmethod
    def startswith(string,substring):
        return all(x==y for x,y in zip(string,substring))
    def removeSubfolders(self, folder: List[str]) -> List[str]:
        folder = sorted(i.split("/")[1:] for i in folder)
        output = []
        prev = [None]
        for i in sorted(folder):
            if not self.startswith(i,prev):
                output.append("/"+"/".join(i))
                prev = i
        return output