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Print Words Vertically

Difficulty: Medium

Problem Description

Given a string s. Return all the words vertically in the same order in which they appear in s. Words are returned as a list of strings, complete with spaces when necessary. (Trailing spaces are not allowed). Each word would be put on only one column and that in one column there will be only one word.

Key Insights

  • Split the input string into individual words.
  • Determine the maximum length of the words to know how many rows to create.
  • Construct each vertical string by iterating through the characters of the words up to the maximum length.
  • Handle spaces for shorter words to ensure proper vertical alignment without trailing spaces.

Space and Time Complexity

Time Complexity: O(N * M), where N is the number of words and M is the maximum length of the words.
Space Complexity: O(N * M) for storing the result.

Solution

To solve the problem, we will:

  1. Split the string into a list of words using the space as a delimiter.
  2. Find the maximum length of the words to determine how many vertical strings we need to create.
  3. Iterate through each index up to the maximum length and construct each vertical string by appending characters from each word or a space if the word is shorter than the current index.
  4. Finally, we will return the list of vertical strings, ensuring that there are no trailing spaces.

Code Solutions

def printVertically(s: str) -> List[str]:
    words = s.split()
    max_length = max(len(word) for word in words)
    result = []
    
    for i in range(max_length):
        vertical_word = ''
        for word in words:
            # Append the character if it exists, else append a space
            vertical_word += word[i] if i < len(word) else ' '
        # Strip the trailing spaces and add to result
        result.append(vertical_word.rstrip())
    
    return result
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