Shortest Word Distance

Source

• leetcode: 243

Given a list of words and two words word1 and word2, return the shortest distance between these two words in the list.
For example,
Assume that words = ["practice", "makes", "perfect", "coding", "makes"].
Given word1 = "coding", word2 = "practice", return 3.
Given word1 = "makes", word2 = "coding", return 1.
Note:
You may assume that word1 does not equal to word2, and word1 and word2 are both in the list.

java

public int shortestDistance(String[] words, String word1, String word2) {
    if (words == null) return -1;
    int idx1 = -1, idx2 = -1;
    int diff = words.length;
    for (int i = 0; i < words.length; i++) {
        if (words[i].equals(word1)) {
            idx1 = i;                
        } else if (words[i].equals(word2)) {
            idx2 = i;                
        }
        if(idx1!=-1&&idx2!=-1){
            diff = Math.min(diff,Math.abs(idx1-idx2));
        }
    }
    return diff;
}