916. Word Subsets

MediumArrayHash TableString
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Problem Description

The problem provides two arrays of strings, words1 and words2. The goal is to determine which strings from words1 are considered "universal." A string is universal if every string in words2 is a subset of it. A string b is a subset of another string a if a contains all the letters of b in the same number or more. That means for every character and its count in b, this character must appear at least the same number of times in a. For example, 'wrr' is a subset of 'warrior' but not of 'world'. The task is to return an array of universal strings from words1, and the order of results does not matter.

Intuition

To find the universal strings efficiently, rather than comparing each string in words1 with all the strings in words2, we can create a letter frequency count that represents the maximum frequency of each character across all strings in words2. This way, we only need to compare each string in words1 with this combined frequency count.

Firstly, we create a Counter (which is a dictionary subclass for counting hashable objects) to hold the maximum frequency of characters required from words2. For each string in words2, we count its characters and update our maximum frequency Counter. This counter will tell us the least number of times each character should appear in any string from words1 for it to be considered universal.

After this, we iterate through each string in words1 and create a frequency count for it. Then, we check if this count satisfies the requirements of our precomputed maximum frequency counter. The all() function helps in determining whether all conditions are true for each character's count.

If a string a from words1 has at least as many occurrences of each character as computed in the maximum frequency Counter, then it is universal. We append such strings to our answer list ans.

This solution approach minimizes the number of total comparisons needed to identify the universal strings, and therefore is optimized for the task.

Solution Approach

To solve this problem, the code implementation makes use of Python's Counter class from the collections module. The Counter class is a specialized dictionary used for counting hashable objects, in our case, characters in strings. It's particularly useful because it allows us to easily compare the frequencies of letters in different strings.

Hereā€™s a step-by-step walkthrough of the implementation:

  1. Initialize a new Counter object called cnt, which will be used to store the maximum frequency requirements for each letter, derived from words2.

    1cnt = Counter()
  2. Loop over each string b in the array words2. For each string:

    a. Create a temporary counter t from b.

    b. Update the cnt counter with the maximum frequency of characters from t. This means cnt[c] = max(cnt[c], v) for each character c and its count v in t. This ensures that cnt holds the maximum number of times any character needs to appear for a string from words1 to be universal.

    1for b in words2:
    2    t = Counter(b)
    3    for c, v in t.items():
    4        cnt[c] = max(cnt[c], v)
  3. Initialize an empty list ans, which will hold all the universal strings from words1.

    1ans = []
  4. Loop over each string a in words1. For each string:

    a. Create a temporary counter t from a.

    b. Use the all function to check if a contains at least as many of each character as required by the cnt counter. The comparison v <= t[c] for c, v in cnt.items() ensures that a meets the criteria for all characters c with their respective counts v in cnt.

    c. If a meets the criteria, append it to the ans list.

    1for a in words1:
    2    t = Counter(a)
    3    if all(v <= t[c] for c, v in cnt.items()):
    4        ans.append(a)
  5. Finally, return the list ans, which now contains all the universal strings from words1.

    1    return ans

The primary algorithm patterns used in this solution include frequency counting and iterating with condition checking. By using the Counter class with maximum frequency logic, the code efficiently reduces what could be an O(n * m) problem (checking each of n strings in words1 against each of m strings in words2) to a more manageable O(n + m) problem by minimizing repetitive checks.

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Example Walkthrough

Consider the following example to illustrate the solution approach:

Let words1 be ["ecology", "universal", "computer"] and words2 be ["cool", "envy", "yon", "yes"].

  1. The maximum frequency counters (cnt) are determined from words2. For "cool", it will be {'c': 1, 'o': 2, 'l': 1}, for "envy", it will be {'e': 1, 'n': 1, 'v': 1, 'y': 1} and so forth. Ultimately, after comparing all words2 strings, cnt would be:

    1cnt = {'c': 1, 'o': 2, 'l': 1, 'e': 1, 'n': 1, 'v': 1, 'y': 2, 's': 1}

    This cnt means for a string in words1 to be universal; it must have at least one 'c', two 'o's, one 'l', one 'e', one 'n', one 'v', two 'y's, and one 's'.

  2. Now we check each word in words1 against cnt.

    • "ecology": It's counter is {'e': 1, 'c': 1, 'o': 1, 'l': 1, 'g': 1, 'y': 1}. While this word has all the required characters, it fails to meet the count for 'o' and 'y'. Thus, "ecology" is not universal.

    • "universal": Counter is {'u': 1, 'n': 1, 'i': 1, 'v': 1, 'e': 1, 'r': 1, 's': 1, 'a': 1, 'l': 1}. Despite having all characters, it does not have enough 'o's and 'y's. So, "universal" is not universal.

    • "computer": Counter is {'c': 1, 'o': 1, 'm': 1, 'p': 1, 'u': 1, 't': 1, 'e': 1, 'r': 1}. Even though "computer" meets or exceeds the count for 'c', 'e', 't', 'r', it doesnā€™t contain any 'l', 'v', 'y', or sufficient 'o's. Therefore, it's not universal either.

  3. Applying this logic, none of the words in words1 are universal, as none meet the frequency criteria established by words2. The final answer ans list would be empty.

The result is an efficient check that precisely tells us that there are no strings in words1 that are universal with respect to words2. Thus, the function would return an empty list [].

Solution Implementation

1from collections import Counter
2
3class Solution:
4    def wordSubsets(self, words1: List[str], words2: List[str]) -> List[str]:
5        # Create a counter to store the maximum frequency of each character 
6        # across all words in words2
7        max_freq_counter = Counter()
8        for word in words2:
9            word_freq_counter = Counter(word)
10            for char, freq in word_freq_counter.items():
11                # Update the counter for each character to the maximum frequency
12                max_freq_counter[char] = max(max_freq_counter[char], freq)
13      
14        # Initialize a list to keep all words from words1 that meet the criteria
15        universal_words = []
16        # Iterate through each word in words1 to check if it is a universal word
17        for word in words1:
18            word_freq_counter = Counter(word)
19            # Check if word has at least as many of each character as needed
20            is_universal = all(freq <= word_freq_counter[char] for char, freq in max_freq_counter.items())
21            # If the word meets the criteria, add it to the universal words list
22            if is_universal:
23                universal_words.append(word)
24      
25        # Return the list of universal words
26        return universal_words
27
1class Solution {
2    public List<String> wordSubsets(String[] universalSet, String[] subsetWords) {
3        // This array will keep the max frequency of each letter required by subsetWords
4        int[] maxSubsetFreq = new int[26];
5      
6        // Calculate the max frequency of each character across all words in subsetWords
7        for (String subsetWord : subsetWords) {
8            // Temporary array to store frequency of each character in the current word
9            int[] tempFreq = new int[26];
10            for (char ch : subsetWord.toCharArray()) {
11                // Increment character frequency
12                tempFreq[ch - 'a']++;
13              
14                // Update the maxSubsetFreq array with the maximum frequency needed for this character
15                maxSubsetFreq[ch - 'a'] = Math.max(maxSubsetFreq[ch - 'a'], tempFreq[ch - 'a']);
16            }
17        }
18      
19        // This will store our final result
20        List<String> result = new ArrayList<>();
21      
22        // Loop through each word in universalSet
23        for (String word : universalSet) {
24            // Temporary array to store frequency of each character in the current word
25            int[] wordFreq = new int[26];
26            for (char ch : word.toCharArray()) {
27                // Increment character frequency
28                wordFreq[ch - 'a']++;
29            }
30          
31            // Check if the current word contains all the required characters in proper frequency 
32            boolean isUniversal = true;
33            for (int i = 0; i < 26; ++i) {
34                if (maxSubsetFreq[i] > wordFreq[i]) {
35                    // If any character is found in less frequency than required, 
36                    // mark word as non-universal, and break the loop
37                    isUniversal = false;
38                    break;
39                }
40            }
41          
42            // If the word is universal, add it to the result list
43            if (isUniversal) {
44                result.add(word);
45            }
46        }
47      
48        // Return the list of all universal words
49        return result;
50    }
51}
52
1#include <vector>
2#include <algorithm>
3#include <string>
4#include <cstring>
5
6class Solution {
7public:
8    // Determines the words from words1 that are universal for words2.
9    vector<string> wordSubsets(vector<string>& words1, vector<string>& words2) {
10        int maxCharFrequencies[26] = {0}; // Array to store the maximum frequency of each character required across all words in words2
11        int currentWordFrequencies[26]; // Array to store the frequency of characters in the current word
12
13        // Calculate the maximum frequency of each character across all words in words2
14        for (const auto& wordB : words2) {
15            memset(currentWordFrequencies, 0, sizeof(currentWordFrequencies));
16            for (const char &ch : wordB) {
17                currentWordFrequencies[ch - 'a']++;
18            }
19            // Update maxCharFrequencies with the maximum frequency for each character
20            for (int i = 0; i < 26; ++i) {
21                maxCharFrequencies[i] = std::max(maxCharFrequencies[i], currentWordFrequencies[i]);
22            }
23        }
24
25        vector<string> universalWords; // Vector to store the universal words
26
27        // Iterate over each word in words1 to determine if it is universal.
28        for (const auto& wordA : words1) {
29            memset(currentWordFrequencies, 0, sizeof(currentWordFrequencies));
30            for (const char &ch : wordA) {
31                currentWordFrequencies[ch - 'a']++;
32            }
33            // Check if wordA has at least the maximum frequency of each character required by words in words2
34            bool isUniversal = true;
35            for (int i = 0; i < 26; ++i) {
36                if (maxCharFrequencies[i] > currentWordFrequencies[i]) {
37                    isUniversal = false;
38                    break;
39                }
40            }
41            // If the word is universal, add it to the resulting vector.
42            if (isUniversal) {
43                universalWords.emplace_back(wordA);
44            }
45        }
46
47        return universalWords; // Return the vector containing all universal words
48    }
49};
50
1// Type definition for a frequency array representing characters 'a' to 'z'
2type CharFrequencyArray = number[];
3
4// Calculates character frequencies in a given word
5function calculateCharFrequencies(word: string): CharFrequencyArray {
6    const frequencies: CharFrequencyArray = new Array(26).fill(0);
7    for (const char of word) {
8        frequencies[char.charCodeAt(0) - 'a'.charCodeAt(0)]++;
9    }
10    return frequencies;
11}
12
13// Determine the words from words1 that are universal for words2
14function wordSubsets(words1: string[], words2: string[]): string[] {
15    let maxCharFrequencies: CharFrequencyArray = new Array(26).fill(0); // Store max frequency of each char across all words in words2
16
17    // Calculate max frequency of each character required by words in words2
18    for (const word of words2) {
19        const currentWordFrequencies = calculateCharFrequencies(word);
20        // Update max frequencies
21        for (let i = 0; i < 26; i++) {
22            maxCharFrequencies[i] = Math.max(maxCharFrequencies[i], currentWordFrequencies[i]);
23        }
24    }
25
26    const universalWords: string[] = []; // Storage for universal words
27
28    // Check each word in words1 for universality
29    for (const word of words1) {
30        const currentWordFrequencies = calculateCharFrequencies(word);
31        let isUniversal = true; // Assume word is universal until proven otherwise
32      
33        // If word has fewer of any character than required, not universal
34        for (let i = 0; i < 26; i++) {
35            if (maxCharFrequencies[i] > currentWordFrequencies[i]) {
36                isUniversal = false;
37                break;
38            }
39        }
40      
41        // Add universal words to the result list
42        if (isUniversal) {
43            universalWords.push(word);
44        }
45    }
46
47    return universalWords; // Return the list of all universal words
48}
49

Time and Space Complexity

Time Complexity

The given code has two main sections contributing to the time complexity:

  1. Building the Universal Counter:

    • Iterating over each word in words2 and updating the cnt counter for each character.
    • If M is the average length of words in words2 and N2 is the number of words in words2, this part is O(M * N2) in the worst case.
  2. Checking if Words in words1 are Universal:

    • For each word in words1, a counter is created and checked against the cnt counter.
    • If L is the average length of words in words1 and N1 is the number of words in words1, and if K is the number of unique characters in cnt (bounded by the alphabet size), then checking each word has complexity O(L + K), and doing this for all words in words1 gives O(N1 * (L + K)).

Combining the two we get a total time complexity of O(M * N2) + O(N1 * (L + K)).

  • Note that K is bounded by the alphabet size which can be considered a constant, hence it sometimes can be omitted from the Big-O notation, simplifying to O(M * N2 + N1 * L).

Space Complexity

The space complexity of the code comprises the following factors:

  1. The Universal Counter cnt:

    • The maximum space required is the size of the alphabet, let's denote it as a, which is constant. Hence, this is O(a).
  2. Temporary Counter for Each Word in words1:

    • At most, the size of the alphabet a for each word. As this is temporary and not used simultaneously, it's still O(a).
  3. The ans List:

    • At most, it can be as big as N1 in case all words1 are universal. So the space for it would be O(N1).

Considering all, the total space complexity is O(a) + O(N1) which simplifies to O(N1) because a is constant and generally considered negligible compared to N1.

Learn more about how to find time and space complexity quickly using problem constraints.


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