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Solution: Similar String Groups

Explore how to apply the Union-Find algorithm to identify and count groups of similar strings. This lesson guides you through checking string similarity, using union and find operations, and understanding time and space complexity to solve graph connectivity problems involving strings.

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:

  • 11 \leq strs.length 300\leq 300

  • 11 \leq strs[i].length 300\leq 300

  • strs[i] consists of lowercase letters only. ...