Swap Characters Once to Minimize Differences - Google Top Interview Questions
Problem Statement :
You are given two lowercase alphabet strings s and t of the same length. Given that you can make at most one swap between two characters in s, return the minimum number of indices where s[i] ≠ t[i]. Constraints 1 ≤ n ≤ 100,000 where n is the length of s and t Example 1 Input s = "abbz" t = "zcca" Output 2 Explanation We can swap "a" and "z" to turn s into "zbba". Then there's 2 characters that differ between t. Example 2 Input s = "zfba" t = "zbca" Output 1 Explanation We can swap "f" and "b" to turn s into "zbfa". Then there's only 1 character that differ between t. Example 3 Input s = "abc" t = "abc" Output 0 Explanation We don't need to swap since all the characters in s already match with t.
Solution :
Solution in C++ :
const int Z = 26;
int mismatched[Z];
int solve(string s, string t) {
memset(mismatched, 0, sizeof(mismatched));
int mismatched_pairs = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < (int)s.size(); i++) {
mismatched_pairs += s[i] != t[i];
if (s[i] != t[i]) mismatched[s[i] - 'a'] |= 1 << (t[i] - 'a');
}
bool can_swap_one = false;
for (int i = 0; i < Z; i++) {
if (!mismatched[i]) continue;
int i_bit = 1 << i;
for (int j = 0; j < Z; j++) {
if ((mismatched[i] & (1 << j)) && (mismatched[j] & i_bit)) return mismatched_pairs - 2;
can_swap_one |= mismatched[j] & i_bit;
}
}
return mismatched_pairs - can_swap_one;
}
Solution in Java :
import java.util.*;
class Solution {
public int solve(String a, String b) {
int N = a.length();
boolean[][] occ = new boolean[26][26];
int ans = 0;
boolean[] inA = new boolean[26];
boolean[] inB = new boolean[26];
for (int i = 0; i < N; i++) {
int v1 = a.charAt(i) - 'a';
int v2 = b.charAt(i) - 'a';
if (v1 != v2) {
ans++;
occ[v1][v2] = true;
inA[v1] = true;
inB[v2] = true;
}
}
for (int i = 0; i < 26; i++) {
for (int j = i + 1; j < 26; j++) {
if (occ[i][j] && occ[j][i]) {
// there exists indices where letters i and j can be swapped.
return ans - 2;
}
}
}
for (int i = 0; i < 26; i++) {
if (inA[i] && inB[i]) {
// a swap exists to get a pair of letter i.
return ans - 1;
}
}
return ans;
}
}
Solution in Python :
class Solution:
def solve(self, s, t):
badpairs = set()
ans = 0
for (a, b) in zip(s, t):
if a == b:
continue
badpairs.add((a, b))
ans += 1
for x, y in badpairs:
if (y, x) in badpairs:
return ans - 2
for x, _ in badpairs:
for ch in ascii_lowercase:
if (ch, x) in badpairs:
return ans - 1
return ans
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