244: Shortest Word Distance

Given a list of words and two words word1 and word2, return the shortest distance between these two words in the list.

For example,

Assume that words = ["practice", "makes", "perfect", "coding", "makes"].

Given word1 = “coding”, word2 = “practice”, return 3.

Given word1 = "makes", word2 = "coding", return 1.

Note: You may assume that word1 does not equal to word2, and word1 and word2 are both in the list.

public class Solution {
    public int shortestDistance(String[] words, String word1, String word2) {
        int posA = -1;
        int posB = -1;

        int minDistance = Integer.MAX_VALUE;

        for (int i = 0; i < words.length; i++) {
            if (words[i].equals(word1)) {
                posA = i;
            }

            if (words[i].equals(word2)) {
                posB = i;
            }

            if (posA != -1 && posB != -1) {
                minDistance = Math.min(minDistance, Math.abs(posA - posB));
            }
        }

        return minDistance;
    }
}