Leetcode•Apr 28, 2025
Delete Operation for Two Strings
Hazrat Ali
Leetcode
Given two strings word1
and word2
, return the minimum number of steps required to make word1
and word2
the same.
In one step, you can delete exactly one character in either string.
Example 1:
Input: word1 = "sea", word2 = "eat" Output: 2 Explanation: You need one step to make "sea" to "ea" and another step to make "eat" to "ea".
Example 2:
Input: word1 = "leetcode", word2 = "etco" Output: 4
Solution
/**
* @param {string} word1
* @param {string} word2
* @return {number}
*/
const minDistance = (word1, word2) => {
const m = word1.length;
const n = word2.length;
const dp = Array(m + 1)
.fill()
.map(() => Array(n + 1).fill(0));
for (let i = 0; i <= m; i++) {
dp[i][0] = i;
}
for (let j = 0; j <= n; j++) {
dp[0][j] = j;
}
for (let i = 1; i <= m; i++) {
for (let j = 1; j <= n; j++) {
if (word1[i - 1] === word2[j - 1]) {
dp[i][j] = dp[i - 1][j - 1];
} else {
dp[i][j] = Math.min(dp[i - 1][j - 1] + 2, Math.min(dp[i - 1][j] + 1, dp[i][j - 1] + 1));
}
}
}
return dp[m][n];
};