Section 1Understand Problem
Section 01
Understand the problem
Restate the problem precisely. Interviewers reward candidates who pause, define the contract, and name the guarantees before coding.
Problem statement
Given string `num` representing a non-negative integer, and an integer `k`, return the smallest possible integer after removing `k` digits from `num`. The result should not have leading zeros (use "0" if the result is empty or only zeros).
Example
num = "1432219", k = 3 → "1219"
Constraints
1 ≤ k ≤ num.length ≤ 10⁵ · num consists of only digits · num does not have leading zeros except 0 itself
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