[leetcode] 720. Longest Word in Dictionary

Given a list of strings words representing an English Dictionary, find the longest word in words that can be built one character at a time by other words in words. If there is more than one possible answer, return the longest word with the smallest lexicographical order.

If there is no answer, return the empty string.

Example 1:

Input: 
words = ["w","wo","wor","worl", "world"]
Output: "world"
Explanation: 
The word "world" can be built one character at a time by "w", "wo", "wor", and "worl".

Example 2:

Input: 
words = ["a", "banana", "app", "appl", "ap", "apply", "apple"]
Output: "apple"
Explanation: 
Both "apply" and "apple" can be built from other words in the dictionary. However, "apple" is lexicographically smaller than "apply".

题目：给出一个words的字符串集合，找出可以由其中可以由一个接一个字符组装的最大字符串。

Sol:

class Solution {
public:
    string longestWord(vector<string>& words) {
        sort(words.begin(), words.end());
        unordered_set<string> built;
        string res;
        for (string w : words) {
            if (w.size() == 1 || built.count(w.substr(0, w.size()-1))) {
                //cout << w << " " << w.substr(0, w.size()-1) << endl;
                res = w.size() > res.size() ? w : res;
                built.insert(w);
            }
        }
        return res;
    }
};

附：

使用了unordered_set，每次使用 

built.count(w.substr(0, w.size()-1)))

查询前一个字符串是否存在。