Shortest Completing Word
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Shortest Completing Word

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  • 1The task is to find the shortest word containing all letters from a given license plate, ignoring spaces and numbers.
  • 2Completing words must match the frequency of letters in the license plate, treating letters as case insensitive.
  • 3If multiple shortest completing words exist, the first one in the provided list is returned.

AI-generated summary · May not capture all nuances

Key Insight
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"The task is to find the shortest word containing all letters from a given license plate, ignoring spaces and numbers."

Shortest Completing Word

Given a string licensePlate and an array of strings words, find the shortest completing word in words.

A completing word is a word that contains all the letters in licensePlate. Ignore numbers and spaces in licensePlate, and treat letters as case insensitive. If a letter appears more than once in licensePlate, then it must appear in the word the same number of times or more.

For example, if licensePlate = "aBc 12c", then it contains letters 'a', 'b' (ignoring case), and 'c' twice. Possible completing words are "abccdef", "caaacab", and "cbca".

Return the shortest completing word in words. It is guaranteed an answer exists. If there are multiple shortest completing words, return the first one that occurs in words.

Example 1:

Input: licensePlate = "1s3 PSt", words = ["step","steps","stripe","stepple"] Output: "steps" Explanation: licensePlate contains letters 's', 'p', 's' (ignoring case), and 't'. "step" contains 't' and 'p', but only contains 1 's'. "steps" contains 't', 'p', and both 's' characters. "stripe" is missing an 's'. "stepple" is missing an 's'. Since "steps" is the only word containing all the letters, that is the answer. Example 2:

Input: licensePlate = "1s3 456", words = ["looks","pest","stew","show"] Output: "pest" Explanation: licensePlate only contains the letter 's'. All the words contain 's', but among these "pest", "stew", and "show" are shortest. The answer is "pest" because it is the word that appears earliest of the 3. Example 3:

Input: licensePlate = "Ah71752", words = ["suggest","letter","of","husband","easy","education","drug","prevent","writer","old"] Output: "husband" Example 4:

Input: licensePlate = "OgEu755", words = ["enough","these","play","wide","wonder","box","arrive","money","tax","thus"] Output: "enough" Example 5:

Input: licensePlate = "iMSlpe4", words = ["claim","consumer","student","camera","public","never","wonder","simple","thought","use"] Output: "simple"

public class Solution {
 public string ShortestCompletingWord(string licensePlate, string[] words) {
 var map = new Dictionary<char,int>();
 for(int i=0;i<licensePlate.Length;i++){
 licensePlate = licensePlate.ToLower();
 if(licensePlate[i]>=65 && licensePlate[i]>= 90){
 if(map.ContainsKey(licensePlate[i])){
 map[licensePlate[i]]++;
 }
 else{
 map.Add(licensePlate[i],1);
 }
 }
 }
 
 int minLen = int.MaxValue;
 string ans = string.Empty;
 for(int i=0;i<words.Length;i++){
 var wordMap = new Dictionary<char,int>();
 var word = words[i].ToLower();
 for(int j=0;j<words[i].Length;j++){
 if(wordMap.ContainsKey(word[j])){
 wordMap[word[j]]++;
 }
 else{
 wordMap.Add(word[j],1);
 }
 }
 
 bool found = true; 
 foreach(var item in map){
 if(wordMap.ContainsKey(item.Key)){
 if(wordMap[item.Key]<item.Value){
 found = false;
 break;
 }
 }
 else{
 found = false;
 break;
 }
 }
 
 if(found && words[i].Length<minLen){
 minLen = words[i].Length;
 ans = words[i];
 }
 }
 
 return ans;
 }
}

Time Complexity: O(m*n)

Space complexity: O(m*n)

Where m and n are the total number of strings and length of strings.

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sumitc91

Published on 30 September 2020 · 2 min read · 384 words

Part of AskGif Blog · coding

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