Solution: Similar String Groups
Explore how to identify and group similar strings using the Union-Find data structure. Understand the concept of string similarity defined by at most two character swaps, and apply this to find connected components among a list of anagram strings. This lesson teaches the implementation details, similarity checks, and the analysis of time and space complexity to efficiently solve the problem of counting similarity groups.
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Statement
Two strings x and y are considered similar if they are either exactly the same or can be made identical by swapping at most two different characters in string x.
We define a similarity group as a set of strings where each string is similar to at least one other string in the group. A string doesn't need to be directly similar to every other string in the group — it just needs to be connected to them through a chain of similarities.
Given a list of strings strs, where each string is an anagram of the others, your task is to determine how many such similarity groups exist in the list.
Constraints:
strs.lengthstrs[i].lengthstrs[i]consists of lowercase letters only. ...