Acronym - codepath/compsci_guides GitHub Wiki

TIP102 Unit 1 Session 2 Standard (Click for link to problem statements)

Problem Highlights

• 💡 Difficulty: Easy
• ⏰ Time to complete: 10 mins
• 🛠️ Topics: String Processing, Iteration

U-nderstand

Understand what the interviewer is asking for by using test cases and questions about the problem.

• Established a set (2-3) of test cases to verify their own solution later.
• Established a set (1-2) of edge cases to verify their solution handles complexities.
• Have fully understood the problem and have no clarifying questions.
• Have you verified any Time/Space Constraints for this problem?

• The function is_acronym() should take a list of strings words and a string s, and return True if s is an acronym of words, otherwise return False.

HAPPY CASE
Input: words = ["christopher", "robin", "milne"], s = "crm"
Expected Output: True

Input: words = ["pooh", "bear"], s = "pb"
Expected Output: True

EDGE CASE
Input: words = ["bear", "pooh"], s = "pb"
Expected Output: False

Input: words = [], s = "
Expected Output: True

P-lan

Plan the solution with appropriate visualizations and pseudocode.

General Idea: Define a function that checks if the given string s can be formed by concatenating the first characters of each string in the list words.

1. Define the function `is_acronym(words, s)`.
2. Check if the length of `s` is different from the length of `words`. If yes, return `False`.
3. Initialize an empty string `acronym` to store the constructed acronym.
4. Use a for loop to iterate through each word in `words`.
5. For each word, add its first character to `acronym`.
6. After the loop, compare `acronym` with `s` and return the result.

⚠️ Common Mistakes

• Not correctly handling the case where the list of words is empty.
• Incorrectly constructing the acronym by missing or adding extra characters.

I-mplement

Implement the code to solve the algorithm.

def is_acronym(words, s):
    # Check if lengths are different
    if len(s) != len(words):
        return False
    
    acronym = "
    
    # Iterate through each word in words and build the acronym
    for word in words:
        acronym += word[0]
    
    # Compare the constructed acronym with s
    return acronym == s