DEV Community

dev.to staff
dev.to staff

Posted on

Daily Challenge #298 - Find the Shortest Word

#challenge

Given a string of words, return the length of the shortest word in the string.

Examples

find_short("bitcoin take over the world maybe who knows perhaps"), 3)
find_short("turns out random test cases are easier than writing out basic ones"), 3)

Tests

find_short("let us talk about javascript")
find_short("i want to travel the world writing code one day")
find_short("Lets all go on holiday somewhere very cold")

Good luck!

This challenge comes from A.Partridge on CodeWars. Thank you to CodeWars, who has licensed redistribution of this challenge under the 2-Clause BSD License!

Want to propose a challenge idea for a future post? Email yo+challenge@dev.to with your suggestions!

Top comments (8)

Collapse
 
alvaromontoro profile image
Alvaro Montoro •

Here is a silly answer in the same spirit as the sorting by using time outs. The idea is, instead of trying to calculate/compare sizes, setting a timeout for each word with a delay equal to its length. The timeout callback will show the result and cancel the other timeouts.

Here is the code (demo with the code running on Codepen):

function find_short(str) { let timers = {}; const removeTimers = () => { Object.keys(timers).forEach(el => clearTimeout(timers[el])); } const setTimer = word => { timers[word] = setTimeout( function() { alert(`The shortest word has ${word.length} characters`); removeTimers(); }, word.length ); }; str.split(" ").forEach(word => setTimer(word)); }
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode
Collapse
 
chaugiang profile image
Nguyen Tran Chau Giang • • Edited

nice, you are so creative!

Collapse
 
lizard profile image
Lizard •

Here is an answer in python

def find_short(s: str) -> int: """ Returns the length of the shortest word in the string s """ lengths = map(lambda w: len(w), s.split()) return min(lengths)
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode
Collapse
 
ruudgianesini profile image
Ruud Gianesini •

Here is an answer in node (first time I write something in node :) ) :

function find_short(phrase: string) { return phrase.split(' ').reduce( (p, c, i) => (i==0 || c.length < p.length) ? c : p) }
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode
Collapse
 
celyes profile image
Ilyes Chouia • • Edited

Here's the solution in PHP

Note: works only on 7.4+

function find_short(string $str): int { $str = explode(' ', $str); // you can use preg_split('/\s/', $str); usort($str, fn($a, $b) => strlen($a) > strlen($b)); return strlen($str[0]); }
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode
Collapse
 
peter279k profile image
peter279k •

Here is the simple solution with PHP:

function findShort($str) { $freqLen = []; $strs = explode(' ', $str); foreach ($strs as $str) { $freqLen[] = strlen($str); } return min($freqLen); }
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode
Collapse
 
aminnairi profile image
Amin •

Elm

import String exposing (words, length) import List exposing (foldl) shortestLength : String -> Length shortestLength text = text |> words |> foldl (\a b -> if length a < length b then a else b) text |> length
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode
Collapse
 
chaugiang profile image
Nguyen Tran Chau Giang • • Edited

My js solution:

find_short=s=>Math.min(...s.split` `.map(v=>v.length))|0
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode