areSimilar.md

Are Similar?

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Two arrays are called similar if one can be obtained from another by swapping at most one pair of elements in one of the arrays.

Given two arrays a and b, check whether they are similar.

Example

• For a = [1, 2, 3] and b = [1, 2, 3], the output should be
  solution(a, b) = true.

  The arrays are equal, no need to swap any elements.

• For a = [1, 2, 3] and b = [2, 1, 3], the output should be
  solution(a, b) = true.

  We can obtain b from a by swapping 2 and 1 in b.

• For a = [1, 2, 2] and b = [2, 1, 1], the output should be
  solution(a, b) = false.

  Any swap of any two elements either in a or in b won't make a and b equal.

Input/Output

• [execution time limit] 4 seconds (py3)

• [input] array.integer a

  Array of integers.

  Guaranteed constraints:
  3 ≤ a.length ≤ 10^5^,
  1 ≤ a[i] ≤ 1000.

• [input] array.integer b

  Array of integers of the same length as a.

  Guaranteed constraints:
  b.length = a.length,
  1 ≤ b[i] ≤ 1000.

• [output] boolean

  true if a and b are similar, false otherwise.

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Solution

def solution(a, b):
    
    if len(a) != len(b):
        return False
    
    if(a == b):
        return True
    
    for i in range(0,len(a)):
        if a[i] != b[i]:
            for j in range(i + 1, len(a)):
                if a[j] != b[j]:
                    if(a[0:i] + [a[j]] + a[i+1:j] + [a[i]] + a[j+1:len(a)] == b):
                        return True
    
    return False
    

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