Finding common characters in two strings

Question

I am coding for the problem in which we got to count the number of common characters in two strings. Main part of the count goes like this

for(i=0; i < st         


        

Answer 1

It can be done in O(n) time with constant space.

The pseudo code goes like this :

int map1[26], map2[26];
int common_chars = 0;

for c1 in string1:
    map1[c1]++;

for c2 in string2:
    map2[c2]++;

for i in 1 to 26:
    common_chars += min(map1[i], map2[i]);