Solution: Find the Difference
Understand how to identify the index of an extra character in one string compared to another by applying bitwise XOR manipulation. Explore both the naïve sorting approach and an optimized O(n) solution, focusing on efficient iteration and constant space usage.
Statement
Given two strings, str1 and str2, find the index of the extra character that is present in only one of the strings.
Note: If multiple instances of the extra character exist, return the index of the first occurrence of the character in the longer string.
Constraints:
-
str1.length,str2.length - Either
str2.lengthstr1.length + 1, or,str1.length