Largest Uncommon Sequence 1

Problem Statement

Given a group of two strings, you need to find the longest uncommon subsequence of this group of two strings. The longest uncommon subsequence is defined as the longest subsequence of one of these strings and this subsequence should not be any subsequence of the other strings.

A subsequence is a sequence that can be derived from one sequence by deleting some characters without changing the order of the remaining elements. Trivially, any string is a subsequence of itself and an empty string is a subsequence of any string.

The input will be two strings, and the output needs to be the length of the longest uncommon subsequence. If the longest uncommon subsequence doesn't exist, return -1.

Link to GitHub Java: Code
Link to GitHub JavaScript : Code


Example

Input: "aba", "cdc"
Output: 3
Explanation: The longest uncommon subsequence is "aba" (or "cdc"), 
because "aba" is a subsequence of "aba", 
but not a subsequence of any other strings in the group of two strings. 

Solution

• The description explained to the problem would make you think that it is a hard problem .
• It's a one liner . If string a and b are equal then return -1
• Else return max of  a, b

public static int get(String a, String b)
 {
  //If a = b then return -1 else return the max of the 2 strings
  return a.equals(b)?-1:Math.max(a.length(),b.length());
 }