Smallest Distance Between Two Words in Python

Suppose we have two strings, word0, and word1 and a text. We have to find the smallest distance between any two occurrences of word0 and word1 in the given text. Here the distance is measured in number of words. If they are not present in the text then return -1.

So, if the input is like text = "cat dog abcd dog cat cat abcd dog wxyz", word0 = "abcd", word1 = "wxyz", then the output will be 1, as there is one word "dog" between "abcd" and "wxyz"

To solve this, we will follow these steps −

• word_list := a list of words from text
• ans := size of word_list
• L := null
• for R in range 0 to size of word_list - 1, do
  • if word_list[R] is word0 or word_list[R] is word1, then
    • if L is not null and word_list[R] is not word_list[L], then
      • ans := minimum of ans and R - L - 1
    • L := R
• return -1 if ans is same as size of word_list otherwise ans

Let us see the following implementation to get better understanding −

Example

 Live Demo

class Solution:
   def solve(self, text, word0, word1):
      word_list = text.split()
      ans = len(word_list)
      L = None
      for R in range(len(word_list)):
         if word_list[R] == word0 or word_list[R] == word1:
            if L is not None and word_list[R] != word_list[L]:
               ans = min(ans, R - L - 1)
               L = R
      return -1 if ans == len(word_list) else ans
ob = Solution()
text = "cat dog abcd dog cat cat abcd dog wxyz"
word0 = "abcd"
word1 = "wxyz"
print(ob.solve(text, word0, word1))

Input

"cat dog abcd dog cat cat abcd dog wxyz", "abcd", "wxyz"

Output

1

Arnab Chakraborty

Published on 22-Sep-2020 11:21:51

• Related Questions & Answers
• Calculate distance and duration between two places using google distance matrix API in Python?
• Program to find minimum distance of two given words in a text in Python
• Hamming Distance between two strings in JavaScript
• Check if edit distance between two strings is one in Python
• Remove space between two words in MySQL?
• C program to calculate distance between two points
• Find the minimum distance between two numbers in C++
• Common Words in Two Strings in Python
• Find K-th Smallest Pair Distance in C++
• Program to find out distance between two nodes in a binary tree in Python
• 8085 program to find smallest number between two numbers
• How to get the distance between two geographic locations in Android?
• Find distance between two nodes of a Binary Tree in C++
• Program to Find the Shortest Distance Between Two Points in C++
• Program to find smallest pair sum where distance is not consecutive in Python