Shortest substring containing given characters
This problem was asked by Square.
Given a string and a set of characters, return the shortest substring containing all the characters in the set.
For example, given the string “figehaeci” and the set of characters {a, e, i}, you should return “aeci”.
If there is no substring containing all the characters in the set, return null.
My Solution(Python):
def shortestSubstring(s, chars):
if not s or not chars:
return None
left = 0
right = 0
found = False
while right < len(s):
while right < len(s) and not all(char in s[left:right] for char in chars):
right+=1
while all(char in s[left:right] for char in chars):
found = True
left+=1
sub = s[left-1:right]
if not found:
return "characters from set not present in string"
return sub
if __name__=='__main__':
print(shortestSubstring(s="figehaeci", chars={'a', 'e', 'i'}))
print(shortestSubstring(s="figehaieci", chars={'a', 'e', 'i'}))
print(shortestSubstring(s="figehaieci", chars={'a', 'z'}))
print(shortestSubstring(s="", chars={'a', 'z'}))
print(shortestSubstring(s="figehaieci", chars=set()))