Delete Column to Make Sorted

You are given an array of n strings strs, all of the same length.

The strings can be arranged such that there is one on each line, making a grid. For example, strs = ["abc", "bce", "cae"] can be arranged as:

abc bce cae You want to delete the columns that are not sorted lexicographically. In the above example (0-indexed), columns 0 ('a', 'b', 'c') and 2 ('c', 'e', 'e') are sorted while column 1 ('b', 'c', 'a') is not, so you would delete column 1.

Return the number of columns that you will delete.

Example 1:

Input: strs = ["cba","daf","ghi"]
Output: 1
Explanation: The grid looks as follows:
  cba
  daf
  ghi
Columns 0 and 2 are sorted, but column 1 is not, so you only need to delete 1 column.

Example 2:

Input: strs = ["a","b"]
Output: 0
Explanation: The grid looks as follows:
  a
  b
Column 0 is the only column and is sorted, so you will not delete any columns.

Example 3:

Input: strs = ["zyx","wvu","tsr"]
Output: 3
Explanation: The grid looks as follows:
  zyx
  wvu
  tsr
All 3 columns are not sorted, so you will delete all 3.

Solution

class Solution:
    def minDeletionSize(self, strs: List[str]) -> int:
        out = 0
        for col in zip(*strs):
            if sorted(col) != list(col):
                out += 1
        return out