Leetcode: Shortest Word Distance

Question

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

For example,
Assume that words = [“practice”, “makes”, “perfect”, “coding”, “makes”].

Given word1 = “coding”, word2 = “practice”, return 3.
Given word1 = “makes”, word2 = “coding”, return 1.

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

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Hide Similar Problems (M) Shortest Word Distance II (M) Shortest Word Distance III

Solution

class Solution(object):
    def shortestDistance(self, words, word1, word2):
        """ :type words: List[str] :type word1: str :type word2: str :rtype: int """

        l1, l2 = -1, -1
        res = len(words)
        for ind,elem in enumerate(words):
            if elem==word1:
                l1 = ind
                if l2>-1:
                    res = min(res, abs(l1-l2))
            if elem==word2:
                l2 = ind
                if l1>-1:
                    res = min(res, abs(l1-l2))

        return res