243 Shortest Word Distance – Easy
Problem:
Given a list of words and two words word1 and word2, return the shortest distance between these two words in the list.
For example, Assume that words = [“practice”, “makes”, “perfect”, “coding”, “makes”].
Given word1 = “coding”, word2 = “practice”, return 3. Given word1 = “makes”, word2 = “coding”, return 1.
Note: You may assume that word1 does not equal to word2, and word1 and word2 are both in the list.
Thoughts:
The solution is very easy. Keep two index to remember the last appear index for each word. Also have a variable to keep the current shortest distance.
Solutions:
class Solution {
public int shortestDistance(String[] words, String word1, String word2) {
Integer i1 = null;
Integer i2 = null;
int min = Integer.MAX_VALUE;
for (int i = 0; i < words.length; i ++) {
if (words[i].equals(word1)) {
i1 = i;
}
if (words[i].equals(word2)) {
i2 = i;
}
if (i1 != null && i2 != null) {
min = Math.min(min, Math.abs(i1 - i2));
}
}
return min;
}
}