Minimal Unique Word Abbreviations

Question

The candidate is asked to create a function that generates minimal unique word abbreviations for a list of words.

Codemia · Accepted Answer

To solve the problem of generating minimal unique word abbreviations, we need to ensure that each abbreviation is unique among the list of words. The approach involves iterating through each word and generating potential abbreviations, checking for conflicts with existing abbreviations. If a conflict arises, we can incrementally increase the length of the abbreviation until we find a unique one.

1. Create a function `generate_abbreviations(words)` that takes a list of words as input.
2. Initialize a dictionary to track abbreviations and their corresponding words.
3. For each word, generate abbreviations of increasing lengths starting from the first character.
4. Check if the generated abbreviation already exists in the dictionary. If it does, increase the length and check again.
5. Once a unique abbreviation is found, store it in the dictionary.
6. Return the list of unique abbreviations.

Here is a sample implementation in Python:
```python
def generate_abbreviations(words):
    abbreviations = {}
    for word in words:
        abbr = word[0]
        length = 1
        while abbr in abbreviations:
            length += 1
            abbr = word[:length]
        abbreviations[abbr] = word
    return list(abbreviations.keys())
```

The time complexity of this solution is O(n * m), where n is the number of words and m is the average length of the words. This accounts for generating abbreviations and checking for conflicts. The space complexity is O(n) for storing the unique abbreviations.

Consider edge cases such as:
- An empty list of words, which should return an empty list of abbreviations.
- A list where all words are identical, which would require unique abbreviations for each instance.
- Very short words that may not have enough characters to create unique abbreviations.

Interviewers are looking for clarity in your thought process and how well you can articulate your approach. They want to see your ability to write clean, efficient code and how you handle potential conflicts in abbreviations. Additionally, they value your understanding of algorithm complexity and your ability to think critically about edge cases.

Minimal Unique Word Abbreviations

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