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Grokking the Coding Interview Patterns in Python

Solution: Valid Word Abbreviation

Explore how to apply the two pointers approach to determine if an abbreviation matches a given word. This lesson helps you learn to handle character matching and number-based skips efficiently while checking for invalid cases like leading zeros.

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Statement

Given a string, word, and abbreviation, abbr, return TRUE if the abbreviation matches the given string. Otherwise, return FALSE. An abbreviation can replace any non-adjacent, non-empty substrings of the original word with their lengths. Replacement lengths must not contain leading zeros.

A certain word, "calendar", can be abbreviated as follows:

  • "cal3ar" ("cal + end [length = 3] + ar" skipping ...