Code Room
CodingHardcod-g375
Subject StringsLevel Senior–Staff~35 minCommon in Algorithms & data structures interviewsIndustries Software development

Question

Given strings s and t, return the minimum (contiguous) substring w of s such that t is a SUBSEQUENCE of w. If there is no such window, return the empty string. If multiple minimum-length windows exist, return the one with the left-most starting index. 1 <= len(s) <= 2*10^4, 1 <= len(t) <= 100.

Implement
min_window_subsequence(s: str, t: str) → str
Examples
in["abcdebdde","bde"]out"bcde"
What a strong answer looks like

State your approach and its time/space complexity out loud before you optimize. Handle the edge cases (empty input, duplicates, overflow), and say why you chose this over the brute force. Green tests are the floor, not the grade.

Vibe coding: describe the solution in plain language (or narrate it) and the coach grades your approach. Generating runnable code from your description is coming next.

Run or narrate your approach, then ask the coach.