Sentence Similarity III

Problem Description

You are given two strings sentence1 and sentence2, each representing a sentence composed of words. Two sentences s1 and s2 are considered similar if it is possible to insert an arbitrary sentence (possibly empty) inside one of these sentences such that the two sentences become equal.

Key Insights

• Sentences can be considered similar if they share the same starting and ending words, regardless of the number of words in between.
• The words must match in order, and the insertion must be valid with respect to spaces.
• We can effectively compare the sentences by splitting them into words and checking the prefixes and suffixes.

Space and Time Complexity

Time Complexity: O(n + m), where n is the number of words in sentence1 and m is the number of words in sentence2.
Space Complexity: O(n + m) for storing the words in lists.

Solution

The solution involves the following steps:

1. Split both sentences into lists of words.
2. Check how many initial words they have in common (prefix).
3. Check how many final words they have in common (suffix).
4. If the total number of words in common (prefix + suffix) is less than or equal to the length of either sentence, the sentences are similar.

Code Solutions