Short Encoding of Words

arrayhash tablestring

Problem Statement

A valid encoding of an array of words is any reference string s and array of indices indices such that:

words.length == indices.length

The reference string s ends with the '#' character.

For each index indices[i] , the substring of s starting from indices[i] and up to (but not including) the next '#' character is equal to words[i] .

Given an array of words , return the length of the shortest reference string s possible of any valid encoding of words .

Examples

Example 1

Input: words = ["time", "me", "bell"]
Output: 10
A valid encoding would be s = "time#bell#" and indices = [0, 2, 5 ].
words[0] = "time", the substring of s starting from indices[0] = 0 to the next '#' is underlined in " time #bell#"
words[1] = "me", the substring of s starting from indices[1] = 2 to the next '#' is underlined in "ti me #bell#"
words[2] = "bell", the substring of s starting from indices[2] = 5 to the next '#' is underlined in "time# bell #"

Example 2

Input: words = ["t"]
Output: 2
A valid encoding would be s = "t#" and indices = [0].

Constraints

1 <= words.length <= 2000

1 <= words[i].length <= 7

words[i] consists of only lowercase letters.

🤔

Medium

Difficulty

Topic Info

ModuleDSA

CategoryArray

Sub-topicHash Table