Problem
You are given two strings s and t. In one step, you can append any character to either s or t.
Return **the minimum number of steps to make *s* and t anagrams of each other.**
An anagram of a string is a string that contains the same characters with a different (or the same) ordering.
Example 1:
Input: s = "leetcode", t = "coats"
Output: 7
Explanation:
- In 2 steps, we can append the letters in "as" onto s = "leetcode", forming s = "leetcodeas".
- In 5 steps, we can append the letters in "leede" onto t = "coats", forming t = "coatsleede".
"leetcodeas" and "coatsleede" are now anagrams of each other.
We used a total of 2 + 5 = 7 steps.
It can be shown that there is no way to make them anagrams of each other with less than 7 steps.
Example 2:
Input: s = "night", t = "thing"
Output: 0
Explanation: The given strings are already anagrams of each other. Thus, we do not need any further steps.
Constraints:
1 <= s.length, t.length <= 2 * 10^5sandtconsist of lowercase English letters.
Solution (Java)
class Solution {
public int minSteps(String s, String t) {
int[] a = new int[26];
for (int i = 0; i < s.length(); i++) {
a[s.charAt(i) - 'a']++;
}
for (int i = 0; i < t.length(); i++) {
a[t.charAt(i) - 'a']--;
}
int sum = 0;
for (int j : a) {
sum += Math.abs(j);
}
return sum;
}
}
Explain:
nope.
Complexity:
- Time complexity : O(n).
- Space complexity : O(n).