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3076. Shortest Uncommon Substring in an Array

Description

You are given an array arr of size n consisting of non-empty strings.

Find a string array answer of size n such that:

  • answer[i] is the shortest substring of arr[i] that does not occur as a substring in any other string in arr. If multiple such substrings exist, answer[i] should be the lexicographically smallest. And if no such substring exists, answer[i] should be an empty string.

Return the array answer.

 

Example 1:

Input: arr = ["cab","ad","bad","c"]
Output: ["ab","","ba",""]
Explanation: We have the following:
- For the string "cab", the shortest substring that does not occur in any other string is either "ca" or "ab", we choose the lexicographically smaller substring, which is "ab".
- For the string "ad", there is no substring that does not occur in any other string.
- For the string "bad", the shortest substring that does not occur in any other string is "ba".
- For the string "c", there is no substring that does not occur in any other string.

Example 2:

Input: arr = ["abc","bcd","abcd"]
Output: ["","","abcd"]
Explanation: We have the following:
- For the string "abc", there is no substring that does not occur in any other string.
- For the string "bcd", there is no substring that does not occur in any other string.
- For the string "abcd", the shortest substring that does not occur in any other string is "abcd".

 

Constraints:

  • n == arr.length
  • 2 <= n <= 100
  • 1 <= arr[i].length <= 20
  • arr[i] consists only of lowercase English letters.

Solutions

Solution 1: Enumeration

Given the small data scale, we can directly enumerate all substrings of each string and then determine whether it is a substring of other strings.

Specifically, we first enumerate each string arr[i], then enumerate the length $j$ of each substring from small to large, and then enumerate the starting position $l$ of each substring. We can get the current substring as sub = arr[i][l:l+j]. Then we determine whether sub is a substring of other strings. If it is, we skip the current substring; otherwise, we update the answer.

The time complexity is $O(n^2 \times m^4)$, and the space complexity is $O(m)$. Where $n$ is the length of the string array arr, and $m$ is the maximum length of the string. In this problem, $m \le 20$.

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class Solution:
    def shortestSubstrings(self, arr: List[str]) -> List[str]:
        ans = [""] * len(arr)
        for i, s in enumerate(arr):
            m = len(s)
            for j in range(1, m + 1):
                for l in range(m - j + 1):
                    sub = s[l : l + j]
                    if not ans[i] or ans[i] > sub:
                        if all(k == i or sub not in t for k, t in enumerate(arr)):
                            ans[i] = sub
                if ans[i]:
                    break
        return ans
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class Solution {
    public String[] shortestSubstrings(String[] arr) {
        int n = arr.length;
        String[] ans = new String[n];
        Arrays.fill(ans, "");
        for (int i = 0; i < n; ++i) {
            int m = arr[i].length();
            for (int j = 1; j <= m && ans[i].isEmpty(); ++j) {
                for (int l = 0; l <= m - j; ++l) {
                    String sub = arr[i].substring(l, l + j);
                    if (ans[i].isEmpty() || sub.compareTo(ans[i]) < 0) {
                        boolean ok = true;
                        for (int k = 0; k < n && ok; ++k) {
                            if (k != i && arr[k].contains(sub)) {
                                ok = false;
                            }
                        }
                        if (ok) {
                            ans[i] = sub;
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        }
        return ans;
    }
}
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class Solution {
public:
    vector<string> shortestSubstrings(vector<string>& arr) {
        int n = arr.size();
        vector<string> ans(n);
        for (int i = 0; i < n; ++i) {
            int m = arr[i].size();
            for (int j = 1; j <= m && ans[i].empty(); ++j) {
                for (int l = 0; l <= m - j; ++l) {
                    string sub = arr[i].substr(l,