Given a list of words and two words word1 and word2, return the shortest distance between these two words in the list.

Example:Assume that words = ["practice", "makes", "perfect", "coding", "makes"].

Input: word1 = “coding”, word2 = “practice”

Output: 3

Input: word1 = "makes", word2 = "coding"

Output: 1

Note:You may assume that word1 does not equal to word2, and word1 and word2 are both in the list.

 

这道题给了我们一个单词数组,又给定了两个单词,让求这两个单词之间的最小距离,限定了两个单词不同,而且都在数组中。博主最先想到的方法比较笨,是要用 HashMap 来做,建立每个单词和其所有出现位置数组的映射,但是后来想想,反正建立映射也要遍历一遍数组,还不如直接遍历一遍数组,直接把两个给定单词所有出现的位置分别存到两个数组里,然后再对两个数组进行两两比较更新结果,参见代码如下:

 

解法一:

class Solution {

public:

int shortestDistance(vector& words, string word1, string word2) {

vector idx1, idx2;

int res = INT_MAX;

for (int i = 0; i < words.size(); ++i) {

if (words[i] == word1) idx1.push_back(i);

else if (words[i] == word2) idx2.push_back(i);

}

for (int i = 0; i < idx1.size(); ++i) {

for (int j = 0; j < idx2.size(); ++j) {

res = min(res, abs(idx1[i] - idx2[j]));

}

}

return res;

}

};

 

上面的那种方法并不高效,其实需要遍历一次数组就可以了,用两个变量 p1,p2 初始化为 -1,然后遍历数组,遇到单词1,就将其位置存在 p1 里,若遇到单词2,就将其位置存在 p2 里,如果此时 p1, p2 都不为 -1 了,那么更新结果,参见代码如下:

 

解法二:

class Solution {

public:

int shortestDistance(vector& words, string word1, string word2) {

int p1 = -1, p2 = -1, res = INT_MAX;

for (int i = 0; i < words.size(); ++i) {

if (words[i] == word1) p1 = i;

else if (words[i] == word2) p2 = i;

if (p1 != -1 && p2 != -1) res = min(res, abs(p1 - p2));

}

return res;

}

};

 

下面这种方法只用一个辅助变量 idx,初始化为 -1,然后遍历数组,如果遇到等于两个单词中的任意一个的单词,再看 idx 是否为 -1,若不为 -1,且指向的单词和当前遍历到的单词不同,更新结果,参见代码如下:

 

解法三:

class Solution {

public:

int shortestDistance(vector& words, string word1, string word2) {

int idx = -1, res = INT_MAX;

for (int i = 0; i < words.size(); ++i) {

if (words[i] == word1 || words[i] == word2) {

if (idx != -1 && words[idx] != words[i]) {

res = min(res, i - idx);

}

idx = i;

}

}

return res;

}

};

 

Github 同步地址:

https://github.com/grandyang/leetcode/issues/243

 

类似题目:

Shortest Word Distance II

Shortest Word Distance III 

 

参考资料:

https://leetcode.com/problems/shortest-word-distance/

https://leetcode.com/problems/shortest-word-distance/discuss/66931/AC-Java-clean-solution

https://leetcode.com/problems/shortest-word-distance/discuss/66939/Java%3A-only-need-to-keep-one-index

 

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