Search⌘ K
AI Features
Home
Courses
Grokking the Coding Interview Patterns in Python

Check If a Word is a Prefix of Any Word in a Sentence

Explore how to identify whether a given search word appears as a prefix in any word within a sentence. Understand how to return the 1-based index of the first matching word or -1 if none match. This lesson helps you implement and optimize prefix searches using trie methods, enhancing your skills in handling string prefix problems effectively.

We'll cover the following...

Statement

You are given a sentence containing words separated by single spaces and a searchWord. Your task is to determine whether searchWord is a prefix of any word in the sentence.

Return the 1-based index of the first word in which searchWord appears as a prefix.

  • If searchWord is a prefix of multiple words, return the index of the earliest such word.

  • If no word starts with searchWord, return −1-1 ...