algoadvance

You are given an array of strings words and a string s. Determine if s is an acronym of words. An acronym is formed by taking the first letter of each word in words in order and concatenating them together.

Clarifying Questions

1. Input Constraints:
   • What are the constraints on the length of words and s?
   • Are there any constraints on the characters in words and s (e.g., only lowercase/uppercase letters)?
2. Output:
   • Should the function return a boolean value indicating whether s is an acronym of words?
3. Case Sensitivity:
   • Is the comparison case-sensitive?

Given these questions, a typical response might look like:

• You can assume 1 <= len(words) <= 100 and 1 <= len(word) <= 100 for each word in words.
• s would have a length len(s) <= len(words).
• Characters are only alphabetic and case-sensitive.

Strategy

1. Extract Initials:
   • Iterate through each word in words and form a new string by concatenating the first character of each word.
2. Compare with s:
   • Compare the concatenated string of initials with s.

Time Complexity

• Time Complexity: O(n) where n is the number of words since we need to iterate through all words to collect the initials.
• Space Complexity: O(n) for storing the initials string which will be at most the same length as s.

Code

def isAcronym(words: [str], s: str) -> bool:
    # Generate the acronym from the first letters of words
    acronym = ''.join(word[0] for word in words)
    
    # Compare the generated acronym with the input string s
    return acronym == s

Explanation

1. Generation of Acronym:
   • ''.join(word[0] for word in words) generates a string consisting of the first letter of each word in the words list.
2. Comparison:
   • Simply compare the generated acronym to s.

This approach is straightforward and efficient given the problem constraints.

Try our interview co-pilot at AlgoAdvance.com

• Got blindsided by a question you didn’t expect?

• Spend too much time studying?

• Or simply don’t have the time to go over all 3000 questions?