Given a string s, return the length of the longest substring between two equal characters, excluding the two characters. If there is no such substring return -1.
A substring is a contiguous sequence of characters within a string.
Example 1:
Input: s = "aa"
Output: 0
Explanation: The optimal substring here is an empty substring between the two 'a's.
Example 2:
Input: s = "abca"
Output: 2
Explanation: The optimal substring here is "bc".
Example 3:
Input: s = "cbzxy"
Output: -1
Explanation: There are no characters that appear twice in s.
Constraints:
  • 1 <= s.length <= 300
  • s contains only lowercase English letters.

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Last Solution submitted on Feb 21, 2026

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