LeetCode – Shortest Word Distance (Java)

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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.

Java Solution

public int shortestDistance(String[] words, String word1, String word2) {
   int m=-1;
   int n=-1;
 
   int min = Integer.MAX_VALUE;
 
   for(int i=0; i<words.length; i++){
        String s = words[i];
        if(word1.equals(s)){
            m = i;
            if(n!=-1)
                min = Math.min(min, m-n);
        }else if(word2.equals(s)){
            n = i;
            if(m!=-1)
                min = Math.min(min, n-m);
        }
   }
 
   return min;
}

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