Checking if 2 strings contain the same characters?

Question

Is there a way to check if two strings contain the same characters. For example,

abc, bca -> true
aaa, aaa -> true
aab, bba -> false
abc, def ->          


        

Answer 1

Agree to what @Jean says above for an efficient solution using HashMap. This problem is also called Anagram. Below is the solution in Scala.

Note: cleanString is where whitespaces are removed and all characters are lowercase

def isAnagram(cleanString1, cleanString2) = {
  createHashMap(cleanString1) == createHashMap(cleanString2)
}

def createHashMap(str: String): immutable.HashMap[Char, Int] = {
  str.foldLeft(immutable.HashMap.empty[Char, Int]) { (acc, next)
  => if (acc.contains(next)) acc + (next -> (acc(next) + 1)) 
     else acc + (next -> 1)
     }
}