Discussion on: A common coding interview question

View post

Not a JS guy, so I decided to do it in Python.
As an interviewer, for these kind of question I'm not a fan of leveraging too much of the language built-ins (such as sets), as it masks algorithmic thinking, which I believe is an important part of the interview.

My solution uses a dictionary to count the number of occurrences for every item.

from collections import defaultdict

def find_intersect(strings):
    a, b = strings
    a = a.split(",")
    b = b.split(",")
    counter = defaultdict(int)
    intersect = list()
    for idx in range(max(len(a), len(b))):
        if idx < len(a):
            item = int(a[idx])
            counter[item]=counter[item]+1
            if counter[item] > 1:
                intersect.append(item)
        if idx < len(b):
            item = int(b[idx])
            counter[item]=counter[item]+1
            if counter[item] > 1:
                intersect.append(item)
    return intersect if intersect else "false"

elisabethgross • Nov 28 '19

I agree about not leveraging too many language built-ins, or, making sure to talk about the time complexity of those built-ins!