Question

The Question

is_match:
(str, str) -> bool

The first parameter is a puzzle and the second is a view. Return True iff the view could be a view of the given puzzle.

My Answer

I came up with this:

def is_match(puzzle, view):
    if len(puzzle) != len(view):
        return False
    if len(puzzle) == len(view):
        return True

I also found this online:

def is_match(given_puzzle, view):
    if len(given_puzzle) != len(view):
        return False
    unique_letters = set(ch for ch in view if ch != '^')
    for (a, b) in zip(given_puzzle, view):
        if a in unique_letters and a != b:
            return False
    return True

This issue I am having is that if I input:

is_match('blah', 'tr^^')

It will return True for both of the given codes. Which must be wrong due to the fact that the characters don’t even match only the length of the string does
What could i do to fix this?

Answer 1

Based on a previous string of questions about this “puzzle” game, I infer that you want something like:

def is_match(puzzle,view):
    return all(p == v for p,v in zip(puzzle,view) if v != '^' )

*Note that this assumes that puzzle and view have the same length.

What this does is iterate over puzzle and view at the same time, yielding the next character from each as p and v (the magic of zip). I check to make sure that v is not '^' (the placeholder character). If it isn’t a placeholder, I check if it equals p (the character from puzzle). If at any time this latter check fails, then the function returns False. Otherwise, it returns True.