CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonalgorithmwhile-loop
deep
deep

Reputation: 716

Python find if strings are anagram of each other string

I am trying to solve the above interview question to check if string are anagram of each other. The implementation is as follows:

NO_OF_CHARS = 256
def areAnagram(str1, str2):
    count = [0] * NO_OF_CHARS
    i = 0
    while (i in str1) and (i in str2):
        count[ord(i)]+=1
        i += 1
    if len(str1) != len(str2):
        return 0
    for i in xrange(NO_OF_CHARS):
        if count[i]:
            return 0
    return 1

str1 = "geeksforgeeks"
str2 = "forgeeksgeeks"
if areAnagram(str1, str2):
    print "The two strings are anagram of each other"
else:
    print "The two strings are not anagram of each other"

I am getting the following error while running the code:

TypeError: 'In <string> requires string as left operand

Am I doing something wrong in the while loop? Also, how can I avoid to use i = 0 statement? Thanks.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 746

Answers (3)

Jordan Bonitatis
Jordan Bonitatis

Reputation: 1547

An easy way to see if strings are comprised of the same characters is to compare them as sorted lists:

def is_anagram(src, trgt):
    """
    Determine if trgt is an anagram of src
    :param src: (str)
    :param trgt: (str)
    :returns: (bool) True if trgt is an anagram of src; else False
    """
    return sorted(src) == sorted(trgt)

Upvotes: 4

Blckknght
Blckknght

Reputation: 104702

The canonical way to do this in Python is to use collections.Counter:

from collections import Counter

def areAnagram(str1, str2):
    return Counter(str1) == Counter(str2)

This should take O(N) space and time (where N is max(len(str1), len(str2))). But do be aware that even though this code's asymptotic performance is better, it may still be slower for short strings than a version using sorted. Python's sort code is very fast!

If you're likely to be using the function to compare very-unlike strings, you could perhaps it up a little bit with a special case checking the string lengths before counting:

def areAnagram(str1, str2):
    return len(str1) == len(str2) and Counter(str1) == Counter(str2)

Upvotes: 2

Giannis Papadopoulos
Giannis Papadopoulos

Reputation: 89

If you want to go for counting the characters, you need to make counts for both strings and compare them

NO_OF_CHARS = 256
def areAnagram(str1, str2):
    if len(str1) != len(str2):
        return 0
    count = [0] * NO_OF_CHARS
    for c1,c2 in zip(str1,str2):
        count[ord(c1)] +=1
        count[ord(c2)] -=1
    return all(not c for c in count)

I moved checking the length of strings to the beginning of the method for efficiency and clarity

EDIT: Updated my answer according to Blckknght's comment

Upvotes: 2

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