Interview Question #6:
Write a function that will check if two strings are anagram❓🤔
If you need practice, try to solve this on your own. I have included 2 potential solutions below.
Note: There are many other potential solutions to this problem.
Feel free to bookmark 🔖 even if you don't need this for now. You may need to refresh/review down the road when it is time for you to look for a new role.
Code if you want to play around with it: https://codepen.io/angelo_jin/pen/xxrVmdg
Solution #1: Array Sort
- This solution will utilize a helper function to remove all unwanted punctuation and symbols, basically non-alphabetic characters. Then, will sort the string. Once both strings are sorted, compare if they are equal
function isAnagram(stringA, stringB) {
const normalize = (str) => {
return str
.replace(/[^\w]/g, '')
.toLowerCase()
.split('')
.sort()
.join('')
}
return normalize(stringA) === normalize(stringB);
}
Solution #2: Object/Hash Map
- This solution is what I prefer although more steps are needed than the first solution.
Create a helper function to build a hash map for the string counting each and every characters. Once map is built, iterate and compare the count of first map against the second map.
function createCharMap (str) {
const map = {}
const normalizedString = str.replace(/[^\w]/g, '').toLowerCase()
for (let char of normalizedString) {
map[char] = map[char] + 1 || 1
}
return map
}
function isAnagram(stringA, stringB) {
const charMapA = createCharMap(stringA)
const charMapB = createCharMap(stringB)
if (Object.keys(charMapA).length !== Object.keys(charMapB).length) {
return false
}
for (let char in charMapA) {
if (charMapA[char] !== charMapB[char]) {
return false
}
}
return true
}
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Top comments (1)
that would work too, very optimized version. Thanks much.