Problem Statement |
| | If X and Y are two Strings of equal length N, then the difference between them is defined as the number of indices i where the i-th character of X and the i-th character of Y are different. For example, the difference between the words "ant" and "art" is 1.
You are given two Strings, A and B, where the length of A is less than or equal to the length of B. You can apply an arbitrary number of operations to A, where each operation is one of the following:
- Choose a character c and add it to the beginning of A.
- Choose a character c and add it to the end of A.
Apply the operations in such a way that A and B have the same length and the difference between them is as small as possible. Return this minimum possible difference. |
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Definition |
| | | Class: | DifferentStrings | | Method: | minimize | | Parameters: | String, String | | Returns: | int | | Method signature: | int minimize(String A, String B) | | (be sure your method is public) |
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Constraints |
| - | A and B will each contain between 1 and 50 characters, inclusive. |
| - | A and B will both contain only lowercase letters ('a'-'z'). |
| - | The length of A will be less than or equal to the length of B. |
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Examples |
| 0) | |
| | | Returns: 1 | | You can prepend "top" to "koder" and you'll get "topkoder". The difference between "topkoder" and "topcoder" is 1. |
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| 1) | |
| | | Returns: 1 | | A and B already have the same length so you cannot add any characters to A. |
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| 2) | |
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