Lexicographically Less Than in Strings
The term “lexicographically less than” is used to compare two strings based on the ASCII values of their characters. The comparison starts from the first character of each string. If the first characters are the same, the comparison moves on to the next characters, and so on. A string is considered lexicographically smaller if its first differing character has a smaller ASCII value than the corresponding character in the other string. If one string is a prefix of another, the shorter string is considered smaller.
Java Code
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In Java, we use charAt()
to access individual characters for comparison. If all characters are the same up to the shortest string’s length, the shorter string is considered smaller.
C++ Code
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In C++, we use std::string
and its length()
function. Individual characters are accessed using array-like syntax. The std::min
function is used to find the shorter length.
Python Code
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In Python, we use len()
to get the string lengths and ord()
to get the ASCII value of a character. We use min
to get the shorter length for loop iteration.
Understanding lexicographic comparison is crucial for string manipulation, sorting algorithms, and various other computer science applications.