Anagrams: Detect if two words are equal when reordered

Have you ever wondered if words play hide-and-seek, disguising themselves as each other by simply rearranging their letters? 🕵️‍♀️

🔮 Problem Statement

Our challenge is to create a function, is_anagram, that unravels this linguistic mystery. Given two text strings, word1 and word2, we will determine if they are anagrams of each other.

Parameters:

• string word1: The first word to evaluate.
• string word2: The second word to evaluate.

Return Value:

• bool: True if word1 and word2 are anagrams, False otherwise.

Example:

>>> is_anagram('refinamiento', 'enfriamiento')
True

Explanation:

An anagram is a word formed by the transposition of the letters of another word. “refinamiento” and “enfriamiento” share exactly the same letters, although in a different order.

Additional Notes:

• A word is not considered an anagram of itself.
• The words provided may or may not exist in a dictionary.
• Accents, punctuation marks, and whitespace are ignored. (Although in the provided function, only lowercase conversion is implemented)

🧩 Step-by-Step Solution

The key to solving this problem lies in understanding that two anagrams are, essentially, the same set of letters in a disordered state. Our strategy focuses on simplifying both words to their most fundamental form and then comparing them.

First, we define the is_anagram function that will take two text strings as input:

def is_anagram(word1, word2):

Next, we address the base cases. If the words are identical or have different lengths, they cannot be anagrams (according to our rules). We will return False immediately to optimize the process.

    if word1 == word2 or len(word1) != len(word2):
        return False

To ensure a fair comparison, we convert both words to lowercase. This prevents differences between uppercase and lowercase from interfering with our logic. Then, we transform each string into a list of characters, making sorting easier.

    word1 = list(word1.lower())
    word2 = list(word2.lower())

Finally, we use the sorted() function to sort the lists of characters alphabetically. If the sorted lists are identical, we have found an anagram! We return True in this case, and False otherwise.

    return sorted(word1) == sorted(word2)

Complete Solution:

def is_anagram(word1, word2):
	"level: medium; points: 5"
	if word1 == word2 or len(word1) != len(word2):
		return False
	
	word1 = list(word1.lower())
	word2 = list(word2.lower())
	
	return sorted(word1) == sorted(word2)

🧠 Key Concepts

The central concept here is the relative immutability of the characters in an anagram. We don’t care about the order, but the presence and quantity of each letter. The sorted() function plays a crucial role, as it transforms the complexity of the order into a simple equality comparison. We are taking advantage of the fact that the sorting algorithm (Timsort in CPython) has a complexity of O(n log n), which is efficient for the task at hand. Another important aspect is lowercase conversion, an example of data normalization that is essential in many comparison algorithms. In essence, we are reducing the problem to its simplest expression to solve it efficiently. Did you know that the space complexity of sorted() in Python depends on the implementation, but generally requires additional space to perform the sorting, which could be an important consideration for very long strings? 🤔

💫 Final Thoughts

This solution is efficient and concise, but could be improved further. For example, we could use a dictionary to count the frequency of each letter in both words. This would avoid the need to sort the lists, which could be faster in certain cases. Also, for production, it would be vital to add input validation to handle unexpected error cases (null strings, etc.).

In the world of software development, the ability to break down complex problems into smaller, more manageable parts is crucial. The search for anagrams is a perfect example of how we can apply fundamental principles to solve interesting challenges. 🚀

Did you enjoy this journey through the world of anagrams? If you want to continue exploring the most fascinating corners of software development, don’t hesitate to explore other articles on our blog! The code awaits you! ✨