LeetCode 243. Shortest Word Distance（单词最短距离）

原题网址：https://leetcode.com/problems/shortest-word-distance/

Given a list of words and two words word1 and word2, return the shortest distance between these two words in the list.

For example,
Assume that words = ["practice", "makes", "perfect", "coding", "makes"].

Given word1 = “coding”, word2 = “practice”, return 3.
Given word1 = "makes", word2 = "coding", return 1.

Note:
You may assume that word1 does not equal to word2, and word1 and word2 are both in the list.

思路：从左到右扫描，记录word1和word2的最新位置，比较两个最新位置的距离与最短距离。时间复杂度O(n)

public class Solution {
    public int shortestDistance(String[] words, String word1, String word2) {
        int pos1 = -1;
        int pos2 = -1;
        int distance = words.length-1;
        for(int i=0; i<words.length; i++) {
            if (word1.equals(words[i])) {
                pos1 = i;
                if (pos2 != -1 && pos1-pos2<distance) distance = pos1-pos2;
            } else if (word2.equals(words[i])) {
                pos2 = i;
                if (pos1 != -1 && pos2-pos1<distance) distance = pos2-pos1;
            }
        }
        return distance;
    }
}