LeetCode 245 Shortest Word Distance III

This is a follow up of Shortest Word Distance. The only difference is now word1 could be the same as word2.

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

word1 and word2 may be the same and they represent two individual words in the list.

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

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

Note:
You may assume word1 and word2 are both in the list.

Diffculty
Medium

Similar Problems
[LeetCode 243] Shortest Word Distance Easy [LeetCode 244] Shortest Word Distance II Medium

Analysis

The key is we cannot update the two pointers simultaneously, if they are the same. We could update one, compare the distance, and then update the other.

Solutions

Reference

http://www.cnblogs.com/anne-vista/p/4831092.html