CodingMediumcod-g613

Subject Edit distanceLevel Mid–Senior~28 minCommon in Algorithms & data structures interviewsIndustries Software development

Question

Given two strings word1 and word2, return the minimum number of single-character DELETIONS required (from either string) to make the two strings equal. Each step deletes exactly one character from one of the strings. 0 <= len(word1), len(word2) <= 500, lowercase letters. Example: 'sea' and 'eat' -> 2 (delete 's' and 't', both become 'ea').

Implement

min_delete_distance(word1: str, word2: str) → int

Examples

in["sea","eat"]out2

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.

Learn the concepts

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.