String Array Equivalency

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TIP102 Unit 1 Session 2 Standard (Click for link to problem statements)

Problem Highlights

• 💡 Difficulty: Easy
• ⏰ Time to complete: 10 mins
• 🛠️ Topics: Arrays, Conditionals, Iteration

U-nderstand

Understand what the interviewer is asking for by using test cases and questions about the problem.

• Established a set (2-3) of test cases to verify their own solution later.
• Established a set (1-2) of edge cases to verify their solution handles complexities.
• Have fully understood the problem and have no clarifying questions.
• Have you verified any Time/Space Constraints for this problem?

• The function are_equivalent() should take two string arrays word1 and word2 and return True if the concatenated strings they represent are equal, and False otherwise.

HAPPY CASE
Input: word1 = ["bat", "man"], word2 = ["b", "atman"]
Expected Output: True

Input: word1 = ["cat", "wom", "an"], word2 = ["catwoman"]
Expected Output: True

EDGE CASE
Input: word1 = ["hello"], word2 = ["hello"]
Expected Output: True

P-lan

Plan the solution with appropriate visualizations and pseudocode.

General Idea: Use string methods to concatenate the elements of both arrays and compare the resulting strings.

1. Define the function `are_equivalent(word1, word2)`.
2. Concatenate all elements in `word1` to form `concatenated_word1`.
3. Concatenate all elements in `word2` to form `concatenated_word2`.
4. Compare `concatenated_word1` and `concatenated_word2`.
5. Return the result of the comparison

⚠️ Common Mistakes

• Forgetting to handle empty arrays or using wrong concatenation methods.

I-mplement

Implement the code to solve the algorithm.

def are_equivalent(word1, word2):
    # Concatenate all elements in word1 and word2
    concatenated_word1 = ''.join(word1)
    concatenated_word2 = ''.join(word2)
    
    # Compare the concatenated strings
    return concatenated_word1 == concatenated_word2