Identifying Anagrams
April 28, 2015
Two words are anagrams if they consist of the same letters, with the same number of occurrences, in a different order. For instance, DEPOSIT and DOPIEST are anagrams (aren’t you glad you know that), and OPTS, POTS, TOPS and STOP form an anagram class.
Your task is to write a program that takes two strings as input and determines whether or not they are anagrams; you may assume that the strings consist of only the letters A through Z in upper case. You must provide at least two different algorithms that work in fundamentally different ways. When you are finished, you are welcome to read or run a suggested solution, or to post your own solution or discuss the exercise in the comments below.
Programming Praxis 
Haven’t done the prime number version but the first two were the solutions I went for – both in perl tho’
sub m1 { my( $a,$b ) = @_; return (join q(), sort split q(),$a) eq (join q(), sort split q(),$b) ? 1 : 0 } sub m2 { my($a,$b)=@_; my %x; $x{$_}++ foreach split q(), $a; $x{$_}-- foreach split q(), $b; return 0 if grep { $_ } values %x; return 1; } print m1(@ARGV),"\n"; print m2(@ARGV),"\n";In Python.
from collections import Counter def is_anagram(a, b): return sorted(a) == sorted(b) def is_anagram(a, b): return Counter(a) == Counter(b)Same solutions as Paul in Python. Added additional method using mapping onto primes and taking the product.
First version creates a bag out of each string and compares the bags for equality. The second solution removes all characters in the first string from the second string and checks that it results in the empty string, and vice versa.
Just one solution for the moment: a variant on the sorting method using two heaps. We save on work in the case that the two strings aren’t anagrams:
#include <algorithm> #include <iostream> #include <string.h> bool isanag(char *a, char *b) { size_t n = strlen(a); if (n != strlen(b)) return false; std::make_heap(a,a+n); std::make_heap(b,b+n); for ( ; n > 0; n--) { if (a[0] != b[0]) return false; std::pop_heap(a,a+n); std::pop_heap(b,b+n); } return true; } int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { std::cout << isanag(argv[1],argv[2]) << "\n"; }Here’s another one: generate all possible anagrams of a, and see if any are equal to b:
#include <algorithm> #include <iostream> #include <string.h> bool isanag(char *a, const char *b) { size_t n = strlen(a); std::sort(a,a+n); while(true) { if (strcmp(a,b) == 0) return true; if (!std::next_permutation(a,a+n)) return false; } } int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { std::cout << isanag(argv[1],argv[2]) << "\n"; }Not the most efficient way of solving the problem, but has a pleasant simplicity about it (and isanag only destructively modifies one of its arguments now).
Last one, pack the counts into a single 64 bit number. There are only 2 bits per character so eg. “AAAAC” is considered an anagram of “BBBBB”, but we always correctly detect a true anagram:
#include <iostream> #include <stdint.h> typedef uint64_t T; T sign(char *a) { T s = 0; for ( ; *a; a++) { s += T(1)<<(2*(*a-'A')); } return s; } int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { std::cout << (sign(argv[1]) == sign(argv[2])) << "\n"; }Your second solution doesn’t work too well on a Unicode system: you’d need an array of size 1,114,112. However, a hash table or similar map from characters to integers is the same in spirit.
#include <map>
#include <string>
#include <algorithm>
#include <iostream>
void normalize(std::string& s)
{
s.erase(s.begin(), std::find_if_not(s.begin(), s.end(), ::isspace));
s.erase(std::find_if_not(s.rbegin(), s.rend(), ::isspace).base(), s.end());
std::transform(s.begin(), s.end(), s.begin(), ::toupper);
}
bool common(std::string& a, std::string& b)
{
normalize(a);
normalize(b);
if (a.size() != b.size()) return false;
if (a == b) return false;
return true;
}
std::map<char, int> analyze(std::string word)
{
std::map<char, int> data;
for (auto c: word) {
auto iter = data.find(c);
if (data.end() == iter) data[c] = 1;
else ++(iter->second);
}
return data;
}
bool are_anagrams1(std::string a, std::string b)
{
if (!common(a, b)) return false;
return analyze(a) == analyze(b);
}
bool are_anagrams2(std::string a, std::string b)
{
if (!common(a, b)) return false;
std::sort(a.begin(), a.end());
std::sort(b.begin(), b.end());
return a == b;
}
void test(const std::string& a, const std::string& b, std::ostream& out)
{
out << a << " and " << b << ": " <<
are_anagrams1(a, b) << ", " <<
are_anagrams2(a, b) << ‘\n’;
}
int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
std::cout.setf(std::ios_base::boolalpha);
test("deposit ", " dopiest", std::cout);
test("STOP", "pots", std::cout);
test("rite", "write", std::cout);
test("right", "write", std::cout);
test("same", "same", std::cout);
}
Sorry for the bad formatting in my previous post. Is there a way to delete it?
#include <map> #include <string> #include <algorithm> #include <iostream> void normalize(std::string& s) { s.erase(s.begin(), std::find_if_not(s.begin(), s.end(), ::isspace)); s.erase(std::find_if_not(s.rbegin(), s.rend(), ::isspace).base(), s.end()); std::transform(s.begin(), s.end(), s.begin(), ::toupper); } bool common(std::string& a, std::string& b) { normalize(a); normalize(b); if (a.size() != b.size()) return false; if (a == b) return false; return true; } std::map<char, int> analyze(std::string word) { std::map<char, int> data; for (auto c: word) { auto iter = data.find(c); if (data.end() == iter) data[c] = 1; else ++(iter->second); } return data; } bool are_anagrams1(std::string a, std::string b) { if (!common(a, b)) return false; return analyze(a) == analyze(b); } bool are_anagrams2(std::string a, std::string b) { if (!common(a, b)) return false; std::sort(a.begin(), a.end()); std::sort(b.begin(), b.end()); return a == b; } void test(const std::string& a, const std::string& b, std::ostream& out) { out << a << " and " << b << ": " << are_anagrams1(a, b) << ", " << are_anagrams2(a, b) << '\n'; } int main(int argc, char** argv) { std::cout.setf(std::ios_base::boolalpha); test("deposit ", " dopiest", std::cout); test("STOP", "pots", std::cout); test("rite", "write", std::cout); test("right", "write", std::cout); test("same", "same", std::cout); }def anagram?(a, b) dict = ('a'..'z').each_with_object({}) { |v,h| h[v] = 0 } a.split('').each{|let| dict[let] += 1} b.split('').each{|let| dict[let] -= 1} dict.values.select{|v| v != 0}.empty? end a, b = 'stop', 'pots' puts anagram?(a, b) # Approach 1 puts a.chars.sort.join == b.chars.sort.join # Approach 2My discussion and solution in Java here http://www.capacode.com/?p=7
fun merge lt (xs, ys) = let fun loop(out, [], []) = List.rev out | loop(out, x::xs, []) = loop (x::out, xs, []) | loop(out, [], y::ys) = loop (y::out, [], ys) | loop(out, left as x::xs, right as y::ys) = if lt (x, y) then loop (x::out, xs, right) else loop (y::out, left, ys) in loop([], xs, ys) end fun mergesort lt xs = let val merge' = merge lt (* splits a list into two semi-equal halves in Linear time *) fun split ns = let fun loop([], xs, ys) = (xs, ys) | loop(x::y::zs, xs, ys) = loop(zs, x::xs, y::ys) | loop(x::[], xs, ys) = loop([], x::xs, ys) in loop(List.rev(ns), [], []) end fun ms [] = [] | ms [x] = [x] | ms xs = let val (l, r) = split xs in merge'(ms l, ms r) end in ms xs end fun anagram1 a b = if a = b then true else let val a_list = explode a val b_list = explode b val ms = mergesort (op <) in (ms a_list) = (ms b_list) end fun anagram2 a b = let val array = Array.tabulate(128, fn _ => 0) in CharVector.app (fn char => Array.update (array, ord char, Array.sub (array, ord char) + 1)) a; CharVector.app (fn char => Array.update (array, ord char, Array.sub (array, ord char) - 1)) b; Array.all (fn e => e = 0) array end