Find the Difference

题目

Given two strings s and t which consist of only lowercase letters.

String t is generated by random shuffling string s and then add one more letter at a random position.

Find the letter that was added in t.

Example:

Input:
s = "abcd"
t = "abcde"

Output:
e

Explanation:
'e' is the letter that was added.

总结

思路：使用一个字典，遍历两个字符串，前一个出现+1，后一个出现-1。最后字典中不等于0的key就是答案
代码：

class Solution:
    def findTheDifference(self, s, t):
        """
        :type s: str
        :type t: str
        :rtype: str
        """
        dict = collections.defaultdict(lambda:0)
        for c1,c2 in zip(s,t):
            dict[c1] += 1
            dict[c2] -= 1
        dict[t[-1]] -= 1
        
        for k,v in dict.items():
            if v != 0:
                return k

然而，实际上不需要在所有运算结束后才知道答案，先处理第一个字符串每个+1，在处理后一个字符串的过程中（每出现一次-1），有以下情况可以提前发现答案：
1.字符串在字典中的值已经为0
2.字符串不存在于字典中
代码：

class Solution:
    def findTheDifference(self, s, t):
        """
        :type s: str
        :type t: str
        :rtype: str
        """
        word_dict = {}
        for char in s:
            if char in word_dict:
                word_dict[char] += 1
            else:
                word_dict[char] = 1
                
        for char in t:
            if char in word_dict:
                if word_dict[char] == 0:
                    return char
                else:
                    word_dict[char] -= 1
            else: 
                return char