Linked List Difference Function | Dataford Interview Questions

Accretive Technology Group tools may need to compare revisions of configuration or content text. Given two strings, return the minimum number of single-character edits required to transform the first string into the second.

An edit is one of the following operations:

Insert one character.
Delete one character.
Replace one character with another.

Formal Specification

Implement edit_distance(source, target).

Input: Two strings, source and target, containing lowercase English letters.
Output: An integer representing the minimum number of edits needed to transform source into target.
Each operation costs exactly 1.
Characters may be inserted, deleted, or replaced in any position.

Constraints

0 <= len(source), len(target) <= 500
Strings contain only lowercase English letters
Each insertion, deletion, or replacement costs exactly 1

Function Signature

def edit_distance(source, target):

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