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Shortest Word Distance

Problem Statement

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

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

Leetcode link

Example 1:

Input:["practice", "makes", "perfect", "coding", "makes"],"coding","practice"
Output:3
Explanation:index("coding") - index("practice") = 3

Example 2:

Input:["practice", "makes", "perfect", "coding", "makes"],"makes","coding"
Output:1
Explanation:index("makes") - index("coding") = 1

Code

Python3 Code
from typing import (
List,
)

class Solution:
def shortest_distance(self, words: List[str], word1: str, word2: str) -> int:
size = len(words)
index1, index2 = size, size
ans = size

for i in range(size):
if words[i] == word1:
index1 = i
ans = min(ans, abs(index1-index2))
elif words[i] == word2:
index2 = i
ans = min(ans, abs(index1-index2))
return ans

C++
class Solution {
public:
int shortestDistance(vector<string> &words, string &word1, string &word2) {
int i1 = -1, i2 = -1;
int minDistance = words.size();
int currentDistance;
for (int i = 0; i < words.size(); i++) {
if (words[i] == word1) {
i1 = i;
} else if (words[i] == word2) {
i2 = i;
}

if (i1 != -1 && i2 != -1) {
minDistance = min(minDistance, abs(i1 - i2));
}
}
return minDistance;
}
};