Explanation #500 - Daniel - 16/06/2025 - commit #6

Author: Daniel Nallapalli

Arrays & Strings/#500 - Keyboard Row - Easy/Explanation.md

@@ -0,0 +1,127 @@
+# Problem Title
+
+**Difficulty:** *Easy*  
+**Category:** *Strings*  
+**Leetcode Link:** [Problem Link](https://leetcode.com/problems/keyboard-row/description/)
+
+---
+
+## 📝 Introduction
+
+*Given an array of strings, return the words that can be typed using letters of the alphabet on only one row of a standard American keyboard.*
+
+*The keyboard rows are:<br>
+Top row: qwertyuiop<br>
+Middle row: asdfghjkl<br>
+Bottom row: zxcvbnm*
+
+*You may return the answer in any order.*
+
+---
+
+## 💡 Approach & Key Insights
+
+*The main idea is to check for each word if all its characters belong to the same keyboard row. <br>
+By converting each word to lowercase and then to a set, we can easily determine if its characters are a subset of any one row.*
+
+---
+
+## 🛠️ Breakdown of Approaches
+
+### 1️⃣ Brute Force / Naive Approach
+
+- **Explanation:** *For each word, check if every character belongs to the same keyboard row by comparing each character to the characters in all three rows. This involves checking character-by-character for each word.*
+- **Time Complexity:** *O(n * m) - where n is the number of words and m is the average length of each word.*
+- **Space Complexity:** *O(1) - ignoring output space.*
+- **Example/Dry Run:**
+
+```plaintext
+Example input: ["Hello", "Alaska", "Dad", "Peace"]
+
+"Hello" → uses letters from multiple rows → ✘
+"Alaska" → only row 2 → ✔
+"Dad" → only row 2 → ✔
+"Peace" → multiple rows → ✘
+
+Output: ["Alaska", "Dad"]
+```
+
+### 2️⃣ Optimized Approach
+
+- **Explanation:** *Instead of checking characters one by one, convert each row into a set. Then convert the word into a lowercase set and check if it's a subset of any of the three row sets.*
+- **Time Complexity:** *O(n * m) - where n is the number of words and m is the average length of the words. Checking issubset is efficient for set comparisons.*
+- **Space Complexity:** *O(1) - excluding the space for the output list.*
+- **Example/Dry Run:**
+
+```plaintext
+Example input: ["Hello", "Alaska", "Dad", "Peace"]
+
+Step 1 → Convert keyboard rows into sets
+Step 2 → For each word, convert to lowercase set
+Step 3 → Check if set is subset of row1, row2, or row3
+
+Output: ["Alaska", "Dad"]
+```
+
+### 3️⃣ Best / Final Optimized Approach (if applicable)
+
+- **Explanation:** *The current solution is optimal for this problem. Using sets makes subset checking straightforward and efficient.*
+- **Time Complexity:** *O(n * m)*
+- **Space Complexity:** *O(1)*
+- **Example/Dry Run:**
+
+```plaintext
+Input: ["Type", "Row", "Zzz"]
+
+"Type" → mixed rows → ✘
+"Row" → row 1 → ✔
+"Zzz" → row 3 → ✔
+
+Output: ["Row", "Zzz"]
+```
+
+---
+
+## 📊 Complexity Analysis
+
+| Approach      | Time Complexity | Space Complexity |
+| ------------- | --------------- | ---------------- |
+| Brute Force   | O(n * m)            | O(1)             |
+| Optimized     | O(n * m)            | O(1)             |
+| Best Approach | O(n * m)            | O(1)             |
+
+---
+
+## 📉 Optimization Ideas
+
+*You could pre-map each letter to its row number and then verify if all characters in a word belong to the same row number. This might slightly improve runtime in practice, but the set-based method is already clean and efficient.*
+
+---
+
+## 📌 Example Walkthroughs & Dry Runs
+
+
+```plaintext
+Example:
+Input: ["Alaska", "Dad", "Peace"]
+
+Process:
+1. Alaska → to lower → "alaska" → set("alaska") = {'a', 'l', 's', 'k'} ⊆ row2 → ✔
+2. Dad → "dad" → {'d', 'a'} ⊆ row2 → ✔
+3. Peace → "peace" → {'p', 'e', 'a', 'c'} ⊄ any row → ✘
+
+Output: ["Alaska", "Dad"]
+```
+
+---
+
+## 🔗 Additional Resources
+
+- [Resource 1](https://www.w3schools.com/python/python_sets.asp)
+- [Resource 2](https://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html#set.issubset)
+- [Resource 3](https://leetcode.com/problems/keyboard-row/solutions/)
+
+---
+
+Author: Daniel Nallapalli <br>
+Date: 16/06/2025