Python program to find distance between two words

Suppose we have three strings text, w1, and w2. The text is a sentence with different words. We have to find the smallest distance between any two occurrences of w1 and w2 in the text, the distance is measured in number of words in between them. If either w1 or w2 is not present in text, return -1.

So, if the input is like text = "joy happy power happy joy joy power happy limit" w1 = "power" w2 = "limit", then the output will be 1, as there is only one word "happy" in between the power and limit.

To solve this, we will follow these steps −

• index1 := null, index2 := null

• distance := 999999

• for each index idx and word w in text, do

  • if w is same as w1, then

    • if index2 is not null, then

      • distance := minimum of distance and (|idx - index2| - 1)

    • index1 := idx

  • if w is same as w2, then

    • if index1 is not null, then

      • distance := minimum of distance and (|idx - index1| - 1)

    • index2 := idx

• if index1 is not null and index2 is not null, then

  • return distance

• return -1

Example

Let us see the following implementation to get better understanding

def solve(text, w1, w2):
   index1 = None
   index2 = None
   distance = 2000000
   for idx, word in enumerate(text.split(" ")):
      if word == w1:
         if index2 is not None:
            distance = min(distance, abs(idx - index2) - 1)
         index1 = idx
      if word == w2:
         if index1 is not None:
            distance = min(distance, abs(idx - index1) - 1)
         index2 = idx
   if index1 is not None and index2 is not None:
      return distance
   return -1

text = "joy happy power happy joy joy power happy limit"
w1 = "power"
w2 = "limit"
print(solve(text, w1, w2))

Input

"joy happy power happy joy joy power happy limit", "power", "limit"

Output

1

Updated on 12-Oct-2021 11:18:51

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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

Updated on 22-Sep-2020 11:25:39

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