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2515. Shortest Distance to Target String in a Circular Array

Difficulty Topics

Description

You are given a 0-indexed circular string array words and a string target. A circular array means that the array's end connects to the array's beginning.

  • Formally, the next element of words[i] is words[(i + 1) % n] and the previous element of words[i] is words[(i - 1 + n) % n], where n is the length of words.

Starting from startIndex, you can move to either the next word or the previous word with 1 step at a time.

Return the shortest distance needed to reach the string target. If the string target does not exist in words, return -1.

 

Example 1:

Input: words = ["hello","i","am","leetcode","hello"], target = "hello", startIndex = 1
Output: 1
Explanation: We start from index 1 and can reach "hello" by
- moving 3 units to the right to reach index 4.
- moving 2 units to the left to reach index 4.
- moving 4 units to the right to reach index 0.
- moving 1 unit to the left to reach index 0.
The shortest distance to reach "hello" is 1.

Example 2:

Input: words = ["a","b","leetcode"], target = "leetcode", startIndex = 0
Output: 1
Explanation: We start from index 0 and can reach "leetcode" by
- moving 2 units to the right to reach index 3.
- moving 1 unit to the left to reach index 3.
The shortest distance to reach "leetcode" is 1.

Example 3:

Input: words = ["i","eat","leetcode"], target = "ate", startIndex = 0
Output: -1
Explanation: Since "ate" does not exist in words, we return -1.

 

Constraints:

  • 1 <= words.length <= 100
  • 1 <= words[i].length <= 100
  • words[i] and target consist of only lowercase English letters.
  • 0 <= startIndex < words.length

Solution

shortest-distance-to-target-string-in-a-circular-array.py
class Solution:
    def closetTarget(self, words: List[str], target: str, startIndex: int) -> int:
        N = len(words)
        res = inf

        for i, x in enumerate(words):
            if x == target:
                left = abs(startIndex - i)
                right = N - left
                # print(words, i, left, right)
                res = min(res, min(left, right))

        return -1 if res == inf else res