(Analysis by Mark Gordon)

This problem asks us to repeatedly delete the first occurrence of the string $T$ from a larger string $S$ until $T$ no longer appears in $S$. The literal translation of this process looks something like this:

while S.find(T)
S.erase(S.find(T))


Unfortunately this algorithm is far too slow. Each call to find alone takes $O(TS)$ time (assuming the underlying implementation uses basic string matching). Since the loop can repeat at most $\frac{S}{T}$ times, it follows this has the runtime $O(S^2)$. Additionally each erase call takes $O(S)$ time meaning we spend $O(\frac{S^2}{T})$ time doing erase calls which is also too slow for small strings T.

To fix this problem consider building the result string, $R$, one character at a time. Whenever the end of $R$ matches $T$ we should delete it from $R$. Since this deletion is at the end of $R$ this is just a simple $O(1)$ resize operation.

Now the main problem is how to determine if the end of $R$ matches $T$ efficiently. I will discuss two ways of accomplishing this.

#### Hashing

The first way is to use hashing to efficiently detect string matches. Hashing is a common technique used to speed up the efficiency of string comparisons. Fellow coach Jonathan Paulson discusses how to use this technique here.

In summary, we can initially compute the hash of $T$, $H(T)$, and additionally compute a rolling hash of the end of $R$. It's ok (and preferable) to do a full string comparison in case the hashes match to ensure that the strings really do match. Since they do with high probability we can amortize this against the length of $R$ that we'll delete.

Using a polynomial hash we can keep track of the hash of every prefix of $R$ which can be used to quickly reconstruct the hash of the last $|T|$ characters of $R$ making the overall runtime of the algorithm $O(S)$ in expectation.

#### Knuth-Morris-Pratt

The other way to solve this problem is to use a modified version of the Knuth-Morris-Pratt algorithm. We add characters to $R$ until we find a match for $T$ at which point we remove the last $|T|$ characters from $R$. To reset the KMP algorithm we only need to remember what state we were in $|T|$ characters ago and continue the KMP algorithm from that state.

Here's my hashing-based solution to this problem:

#include <iostream>
#include <vector>
#include <algorithm>
#include <cstring>
#include <cstdio>

using namespace std;

#define HM 1000000007
#define HA 100000007
#define HB 101

/* Given the hash 'h' of string S, computes the hash of S + 'ch'. */
int hext(int h, int ch) {
return (1ll * h * HA + ch + HB) % HM;
}

int main() {
freopen("censor.in", "r", stdin);
freopen("censor.out", "w", stdout);

/* Read the input strings. */
string S, T;
cin >> S >> T;

/* Compute the hash of T. */
int thsh = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < T.size(); i++) {
thsh = hext(thsh, T[i] - 'a');
}

/* Build the result string one character a time. */
string R;
vector<int> rhsh(1, 0);
vector<int> HAPW(1, 1);
for (int i = 0; i < S.size(); i++) {
/* Update the result string. */
R += S[i];

/* Calculate the hash of the new result string. */
rhsh.push_back(hext(rhsh.back(), S[i] - 'a'));

/* Calculate the next power of HA. */
HAPW.push_back((1ll * HAPW.back() * HA) % HM);

if (R.size() >= T.size()) {
/* Compute the hash of the last |T| characters of R.  This is done by subtracting out
* the prefix before the last T characters from the entire hash of R (multiplying by the
* appropriate power of HA). */
int hsub = (1ll * rhsh[R.size() - T.size()] * HAPW[T.size()]) % HM;
int hsh = (HM + rhsh.back() - hsub) % HM;

/* If the end of R and T match truncate the end of R (and associated hash arrays). */
if (hsh == thsh && R.substr(R.size() - T.size()) == T) {
R.resize(R.size() - T.size());
rhsh.resize(rhsh.size() - T.size());
HAPW.resize(HAPW.size() - T.size());
}
}
}

cout << R << endl;
return 0;
}