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Find Shortest Distance Between Words in a Text

Certification: Advanced Level Accuracy: 100% Submissions: 2 Points: 10

Write a Python function shortest_distance(text, word1, word2) that returns the minimum number of words between two given words in a string.

Example 1
     
  • Input: text = "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog", word1 = "fox", word2 = "dog"
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  • Output: 4
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  • Explanation: 
       
    • Step 1: "fox" is at index 3, "dog" is at index 8.
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    • Step 2: Words between them are ["jumps", "over", "the", "lazy"].
      •  
    • Step 3: Count = 4.
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Example 2
     
  • Input: text = "the quick brown fox fox jumps over the lazy dog", word1 = "fox", word2 = "dog"
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  • Output: 3
    •  
  • Explanation: 
       
    • Step 1: Last "fox" at index 4, "dog" at index 9.
      •  
    • Step 2: Words between them are ["jumps", "over", "the"].
      •  
    • Step 3: Count = 3.
      •  
     
    •
Constraints
     
  • 1 ≤ text.length ≤ 105
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  • 1 ≤ word1.length, word2.length ≤ 20
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  • Time Complexity: O(n), where n is the number of words
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  • Space Complexity: O(1)
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Hint
Solution

Solution Hints

    
  
  • Split the text into words and iterate through them
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  • Keep track of the most recent positions where word1 and word2 were found
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  • When you find either word, calculate the distance to the most recent occurrence of the other word
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  • Update the minimum distance whenever a shorter distance is found
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  • Be careful when word1 and word2 are the same word or when either word is not in the text
    •

Steps to solve by this approach:

 Step 1: Split the input text into an array of words.
 Step 2: Initialize variables to track the positions of word1 and word2 and the minimum distance.
 Step 3: Iterate through each word in the text, updating the position variables when either target word is found.
 Step 4: When both words have been found at least once, calculate the current distance between them and update the minimum distance if needed.
 Step 5: Return the minimum distance found, or -1 if either word wasn't found in the text.

Submitted Code :