Character Containment Check | Dataford Interview Questions

Your question is Character Containment Check. Start with the requirements on the right.

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Problem

Amplify Life Center validates message templates before they are published. Given a required string and a candidate string, determine whether the candidate contains every character from the required string, including repeated characters.

Characters are case-sensitive, and spaces and punctuation must be treated as ordinary characters. The order of characters does not matter, and extra characters in the candidate string are allowed.

Formal Specification

Implement contains_all_characters(required, candidate).

Input: Two strings, required and candidate.
Output: Return True if candidate contains each character in required at least as many times as it appears in required; otherwise, return False.

Constraints

0 <= len(required) <= 10^5
0 <= len(candidate) <= 10^5
Characters are case-sensitive.
Spaces and punctuation count as characters.
Inputs contain printable characters.

Function Signature

def contains_all_characters(required, candidate):