Detect anagram in string
Last updated: August 23, 2025
Quick Overview
Given a string and a pattern, determine if the string contains any substring that is an anagram of the pattern. The function should return true if such an anagram exists, and false otherwise. The input will consist of the main string and the pattern string, both of which are non-empty.
Rippling
August 23, 20250
5
604 solved
Given a string and a pattern, determine if the string contains any substring that is an anagram of the pattern. The function should return true if such an anagram exists, and false otherwise. The input will consist of the main string and the pattern string, both of which are non-empty.
Rippling uses this problem in the Take-home Project to evaluate your algorithmic thinking. They expect you to discuss multiple approaches, analyze trade-offs between them, and implement the optimal solution with clean, readable code.
What the Interviewer Expects
- Recognize the underlying problem pattern (sliding window, two pointers, BFS/DFS, etc.)
- Discuss multiple approaches and trade-offs before coding
- Implement an optimal solution with clean, production-quality code
- Handle all edge cases including boundary conditions and invalid input
- Optimize both time and space complexity with clear justification
- Test your solution systematically with well-chosen examples
Key Topics to Cover
How to Approach This
- Clarify input constraints and edge cases before writing code.
- Walk through your approach verbally and confirm with the interviewer before coding.
- Start with a brute force solution, then optimize. Mention time and space complexity.
- Test your solution with examples, including edge cases like empty input or duplicates.
- Consider common patterns: sliding window, two pointers, hash map, BFS/DFS, dynamic programming.
Possible Follow-up Questions
- Can you solve this in a single pass?
- What is the worst-case input for your solution?
- How would you modify your solution to handle streaming input?
- What if the input doesn't fit in memory?
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Practice DSA ProblemsSample Answer
Problem Analysis
To determine if a substring of the given string is an anagram of the pattern, we can utilize the sliding window technique. This approach is suitable here because we need to examine substrings of the m...
Approach
- Initialize Frequency Counters: Create two frequency count arrays, one for the pattern and one for the current window in the main string. The size of the arrays will be 26 to accommodate each le...
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