521. Longest Uncommon Subsequence I

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Given two strings a and b, return the length of the longest uncommon subsequence between a and b. If no such uncommon subsequence exists, return -1.

An uncommon subsequence between two strings is a string that is a subsequence of exactly one of them.

 

Example 1:

Input: a = "aba", b = "cdc"
Output: 3
Explanation: One longest uncommon subsequence is "aba" because "aba" is a subsequence of "aba" but not "cdc".
Note that "cdc" is also a longest uncommon subsequence.

Example 2:

Input: a = "aaa", b = "bbb"
Output: 3
Explanation: The longest uncommon subsequences are "aaa" and "bbb".

Example 3:

Input: a = "aaa", b = "aaa"
Output: -1
Explanation: Every subsequence of string a is also a subsequence of string b. Similarly, every subsequence of string b is also a subsequence of string a. So the answer would be -1.

 

Constraints:

  • 1 <= a.length, b.length <= 100
  • a and b consist of lower-case English letters.

Hints

Hint 1
Think very simple.
Hint 2
If a == b, the answer is -1.
Hint 3
Otherwise, the answer is the string a or the string b.

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