Shortest Word Distance

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.

Note:

You may assume that word1 does not equal to word2, and word1 and word2 are both in the list.

Solution:

  1. public class Solution {
  2.   public int shortestDistance(String[] words, String word1, String word2) {
  3.     int p1 = -1, p2 = -1, min = words.length;
  4.     boolean updated = false;
  6.     for (int i = 0; i < words.length; i++) {
  7.       if (word1.equals(words[i])) {
  8.         p1 = i;
  9.         updated = true;
  10.       }
  12.       if (word2.equals(words[i])) {
  13.         p2 = i;
  14.         updated = true;
  15.       }
  17.       if (p1 != -1 && p2 != -1 && updated) {
  18.         updated = false;
  19.         min = Math.min(min, Math.abs(p1 - p2));
  20.       }
  21.     }
  23.     return min;
  24.   }
  25. }