Sentence similarity iii

Array Two Pointers String

48.5% acceptance

Feb 25, 2026

1064

163

You are given two strings sentence1 and sentence2, each representing a sentence composed of words. A sentence is a list of words that are separated by a single space with no leading or trailing spaces. Each word consists of only uppercase and lowercase English characters. Two sentences s1 and s2 are considered similar if it is possible to insert an arbitrary sentence (possibly empty) inside one of these sentences such that the two sentences become equal. Note that the inserted sentence must be separated from existing words by spaces.

Solution

Rust

Time O(n)

Space O(1)

LeetCode

solution.rs

impl Solution {
  pub fn are_sentences_similar(sentence1: String, sentence2: String) -> bool {
    let w1: Vec<&str> = sentence1.split_whitespace().collect();
    let w2: Vec<&str> = sentence2.split_whitespace().collect();
    let (long, short) = if w1.len() >= w2.len() { (&w1, &w2) } else { (&w2, &w1) };
    let n = long.len();
    let m = short.len();
    // match from front
    let mut front = 0;
    while front < m && long[front] == short[front] {
      front += 1;
    }
    // match from back
    let mut back = 0;
    while back < m - front && long[n - 1 - back] == short[m - 1 - back] {
      back += 1;
    }
    front + back >= m
  }
}