[LeetCode] 243. Shortest Word Distance

Problem

Given a list of words and two words word1 and word2, return the shortest distance between these two words in the list.

Example:
Assume that words = [“practice”, “makes”, “perfect”, “coding”, “makes”].

Input: word1 = “coding”, word2 = “practice”
Output: 3
Input: word1 = “makes”, word2 = “coding”
Output: 1
Note:
You may assume that word1 does not equal to word2, and word1 and word2 are both in the list.

Solution

class Solution {
    public int shortestDistance(String[] words, String word1, String word2) {
        if (word1.equals(word2)) return 0;
        int m = -1, n = -1;
        int min = words.length;
        for (int i = 0; i < words.length; i++) {
            if (words[i].equals(word1)) {
                m = i;
                if (n != -1) min = Math.min(min, m-n);
            } else if (words[i].equals(word2)) {
                n = i;
                if (m != -1) min = Math.min(min, n-m);
            }
        }
        if (m == -1 || n == -1) return -1;
        return min;
    }
}