Minimum Time to Make Rope Colorful LeetCode solution in Python

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# Runtime: 862 ms (Top 94.6%) | Memory: 27.26 MB (Top 71.4%)
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class Solution:
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    def minCost(self, s: str, cost: List[int]) -> int:
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        ans = prev = 0  # index of previously retained letter
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        for i in range(1, len(s)):
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            if s[prev] != s[i]:
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                prev = i
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            else:
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                ans += min(cost[prev], cost[i])
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                if cost[prev] < cost[i]:
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                    prev = i
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        return ans