Program to find smallest value of K for K-Similar Strings in Python

Suppose we have two strings s and t. These two strings are K-similar if we can swap the positions of two letters in s exactly K times so that the resulting string is t. So, we have two anagrams s and t, we have to find the smallest K for which s and t are K-similar.

So, if the input is like s = "abc" t = "bac", then the output will be 1.

To solve this, we will follow these steps −

• Define a function neighbors() . This will take new_data

• for each index i and value c in new_data, do

  • if c is not same as t[i], then

    • come out from loop

• for j in range i+1 to size of new_data - 1, do

  • if u[j] is same as t[i], then

    • exchange new_data[i] new_data[j]

    • generate a string by joining all elements from new_data and return, from next call, start again from this area

    • exchange new_data[i] new_data[j]

• From the main method, do the following:

• q := make one queue ans insert pair (s, 0)

• seen := a new set from s

• while q is not empty, do

  • (u, swap_cnt) := first item of q and delete it from q

  • if u is same as t, then

    • return swap_cnt

  • for each v in neighbors(u as list), do

    • if v is not in seen, then

      • mark v as seen

      • insert (v, swap_cnt+1) at the end of q

• return 0

Example

Let us see the following implementation to get better understanding

from collections import deque def solve(s, t):    def swap(data, i, j):       data[i], data[j] = data[j], data[i]    def neighbors(new_data): for i, c in enumerate(new_data):          if c != t[i]: break       for j in range(i+1, len(new_data)):          if u[j] == t[i]:             swap(new_data, i, j)             yield "".join(new_data)             swap(new_data, i, j)    q = deque([(s, 0)])    seen = set(s)    while q:       u, swap_cnt = q.popleft()       if u == t:          return swap_cnt       for v in neighbors(list(u)):       if v not in seen:           seen.add(v)           q.append((v, swap_cnt+1))    return 0 s = "abc" t = "bac" print(solve(s, t))

Input

"abc, bac"

Output

1