Given 2 strings. Determine whether they can match in 0 or 1 swaps. StringA = "hello" StringB="oellh

Question Analysis

In this problem, you are given two strings, StringA and StringB, and you need to determine if they can be made identical with at most one swap of any two characters in either of the strings.

• StringA: "hello"
• StringB: "oellh"

The task is to check if it's possible to rearrange the characters of StringB to match StringA with zero or one swap. A swap involves switching the positions of two distinct characters within the same string.

Answer

To solve this problem, we must check the following:

1. Zero Swaps: First, check if StringA is already equal to StringB. If they are identical, then they match with zero swaps.

2. One Swap: If they are not identical:

   • Iterate through both strings simultaneously and record the indices where the characters differ.
   • If there are more than two differences, it is impossible to make the strings identical with one swap.
   • If there are exactly two differences, check if swapping these two differing positions in either string makes them identical.

Let's apply this logic to the given strings:

• Step 1: Compare StringA ("hello") with StringB ("oellh").

  • They are not identical, so zero swaps do not work.

• Step 2: Identify differing indices:

  • StringA has h at index 0 and o at index 4.
  • StringB has o at index 0 and h at index 4.

  These are exactly two differences (indices 0 and 4), which suggest a possible swap.

• Step 3: Swap the differing characters in StringB:

  • Swap StringB[0] with StringB[4] which changes "oellh" to "hello".

Since these steps result in StringB being identical to StringA after one swap, the answer is Yes, they can match with one swap.