Problem

You are given a string s, where every two consecutive vertical bars ‘

’ are grouped into a pair. In other words, the 1st and 2nd ‘

’ make a pair, the 3rd and 4th ‘

’ make a pair, and so forth.

Return the number of ‘’ in s, excluding the ‘’ between each pair of ‘

’.

Note that each ‘

’ will belong to exactly one pair.

Example 1:

Input: s = “l|eet|co|de|” Output: 2 Explanation: The considered characters are underlined: “l|e*et|co|*de|”. The characters between the first and second ‘|’ are excluded from the answer. Also, the characters between the third and fourth ‘|’ are excluded from the answer. There are 2 asterisks considered. Therefore, we return 2.

Example 2:

Input: s = “iamprogrammer” Output: 0 Explanation: In this example, there are no asterisks in s. Therefore, we return 0.

Example 3:

Input: s = “yo|uar|e|b|e*au|tifu|l” Output: 5 Explanation: The considered characters are underlined: “yo|uar|e|b|e*au|tifu|l”. There are 5 asterisks considered. Therefore, we return 5.

Constraints:

1 <= s.length <= 1000 s consists of lowercase English letters, vertical bars ‘|’, and asterisks ‘*’. s contains an even number of vertical bars ‘|’.

Pre analysis

Will keep a flag to check if we are inside a pair or not. If we are inside a pair, we will not count the asterisk.