Shift Distance Between Two Strings
medium · 53.5% accepted · 68 likes · top 45%
array · string · prefix sum
Description
You are given two strings s and t of the same length, and two integer arrays nextCost and previousCost.
In one operation, you can pick any index i of s, and perform either one of the following actions:
- Shift s[i] to the next letter in the alphabet. If s[i] == 'z', you should replace it with 'a'. This operation costs nextCost[j] where j is the index of s[i] in the alphabet.
- Shift s[i] to the previous letter in the alphabet. If s[i] == 'a', you should replace it with 'z'. This operation costs previousCost[j] where j is the index of s[i] in the alphabet.
The shift distance is the minimum total cost of operations required to transform s into t.
Return the shift distance from s to t.
Solution