Binary Zero Removal Problem | Dataford Interview Questions

In a Coupa Business Spend Management activity stream, a binary string marks whether each position contains an active event (1) or an inactive gap (0). Return the minimum number of zeros that must be removed so that all 1 characters become consecutive.

You may remove zeros only. Zeros before the first 1 or after the last 1 do not need to be removed, because they do not separate active events.

Formal Specification

Implement count_zeros_to_remove(s), where s is a non-empty string containing only 0 and 1 characters. Return an integer equal to the number of zeros located strictly between the first and last 1. If the string contains fewer than two 1 characters, return 0.

Constraints

1 <= len(s) <= 10^5
s contains only the characters '0' and '1'
Only zeros may be removed

Function Signature

def count_zeros_to_remove(s):

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