Brute Force
One straightforward approach is to iterate through the array and keep track of the indices of the two target words. Then, compute the minimum distance between the indices.
Example: This example shows the use of the above-explained approach.
Javascript
function shortestDistance(words, word1, word2) { let minDistance = Number.MAX_SAFE_INTEGER; let index1 = -1; let index2 = -1; let i = 0; while (i < words.length) { if (words[i] === word1) { index1 = i; minDistance = index2 !== -1 ? Math.min( minDistance, Math.abs(index1 - index2) ) : minDistance; } else if (words[i] === word2) { index2 = i; minDistance = index1 !== -1 ? Math.min( minDistance, Math.abs(index1 - index2) ) : minDistance; } i++; } return minDistance; } const wordsArray = ["apple", "banana", "orange", "apple", "kiwi", "cherry" ]; const word1 = "apple"; const word2 = "banana"; console.log(shortestDistance(wordsArray, word1, word2)); |
Output
1
JavaScript Program to Find Shortest Distance Between Two Words in an Array of Words
Given an array of words and two target words, the task is to find the shortest distance (minimum number of words) between the two target words in the array. The distance is calculated by counting the number of words between the two target words, excluding the target words themselves.