Character Code Differences | Dataford Interview Questions

Upstart's application and borrower experiences may need lightweight diagnostics for comparing two generated text values. Given two equal-length strings, identify every position where their characters differ and report the Unicode code points involved.

Return a list of records in increasing index order. Each record must contain four values: the zero-based index, the code point from s1, the code point from s2, and the signed difference ord(s2[i]) - ord(s1[i]).

Formal Specification

Implement compare_character_codes(s1, s2), where both inputs are strings of equal length. Return a list of lists with the form [index, code_s1, code_s2, difference]. Return an empty list when the strings are identical. Use Python's ord function so the solution supports Unicode characters.

Constraints

0 <= len(s1) = len(s2) <= 10^6
Each input is a valid Python string
Unicode code points are between 0 and 0x10FFFF
The output preserves increasing index order

Function Signature

def compare_character_codes(s1, s2):

Your question is Character Code Differences. Start with the requirements in the Question tab.

Run and submit as often as you like. When you're ready, talk me through your approach or go straight to the code.

Problem

Formal Specification

Constraints

0 <= len(s1) = len(s2) <= 10^6
Each input is a valid Python string
Unicode code points are between 0 and 0x10FFFF
The output preserves increasing index order

Function Signature

def compare_character_codes(s1, s2):

Your question is Character Code Differences. Start with the requirements in the Question tab.

Run and submit as often as you like. When you're ready, talk me through your approach or go straight to the code.