Hard
,Array
,String
,DFS
,BFS
Two strings X
and Y
are similar if we can swap two letters (in different positions) of X
, so that it equals Y
. Also two strings X
and Y
are similar if they are equal.
For example, "tars"
and "rats"
are similar (swapping at positions 0 and 2), and "rats"
and "arts"
are similar, but "star"
is not similar to "tars"
, "rats"
, or "arts"
.
Together, these form two connected groups by similarity: {"tars", "rats", "arts"}
and {"star"}
. Notice that "tars"
and "arts"
are in the same group even though they are not similar. Formally, each group is such that a word is in the group if and only if it is similar to at least one other word in the group.
We are given a list strs
of strings where every string in strs
is an anagram of every other string in strs
. How many groups are there?
Example 1:
Input: strs = ["tars","rats","arts","star"]
Output: 2
Example 2:
Input: strs = ["omv","ovm"]
Output: 1
Constraints:
strs.length
<= 300strs[i].length
<= 300strs[i]
consists of lowercase letters only.strs
have the same length and are anagrams of each other.
class Solution:
def numSimilarGroups(self, strs: List[str]) -> int:
n = len(strs)
parents = list(range(n))
def find(x):
if parents[x] != x:
parents[x] = find(parents[x])
return parents[x]
def union(x, y):
xr, yr = find(x), find(y)
if xr != yr:
parents[xr] = yr
def similar(s1, s2):
diff = 0
for c1, c2 in zip(s1, s2):
if c1 != c2:
diff += 1
if diff > 2:
return False
return diff == 0 or diff == 2
for i, j in combinations(range(n), 2):
if similar(strs[i], strs[j]):
union(i, j)
return len(set(find(i) for i in range(n)))
Yen-Chi ChenFri, Apr 28, 2023
To solve this problem, you can use the Disjoint Set Union (DSU) data structure. It's a data structure that allows you to efficiently group elements into disjoint sets and check which set an element belongs to. Here's a Python implementation to solve the problem:
class DSU:
def __init__(self, n):
self.parent = list(range(n))
def find(self, x):
if self.parent[x] != x:
self.parent[x] = self.find(self.parent[x])
return self.parent[x]
def union(self, x, y):
xr, yr = self.find(x), self.find(y)
if xr != yr:
self.parent[xr] = yr
def are_similar(s1, s2):
diff_count = 0
for i in range(len(s1)):
if s1[i] != s2[i]:
diff_count += 1
if diff_count > 2:
return False
return diff_count == 2 or diff_count == 0
def count_groups(strs):
n = len(strs)
dsu = DSU(n)
for i in range(n):
for j in range(i + 1, n):
if are_similar(strs[i], strs[j]):
dsu.union(i, j)
return len(set(dsu.find(i) for i in range(n)))
# Example usage
strs = ["tars", "rats", "arts", "star"]
print(count_groups(strs)) # Output: 2
This implementation defines a DSU class with the basic functionality for union and find operations. The are_similar
function checks if two strings are similar, and the count_groups
function counts the number of groups in the input list of strings using the DSU class.