CodeEval solutions to find trailing strings

Question

This is a problem in CodeEval, moderate level. The problem is very easy for this level. But I am not able to get more than 60 points for any solution I submit. (Moderate levels highest score is 65 and they take speed and memory into consideration.)

The problem statement is:

There are two strings: A and B. Print 1 if string B occurs at the end of string A. Otherwise, print 0.

Input

1. Hello World,World
2. Hello CodeEval,CodeEval
3. San Francisco,San Jose

Output

1. 1
2. 1
3. 0

---

import java.io.*;

public class Main {
    public static void main (String[] args) throws IOException {
        File file = new File(args[0]);
        BufferedReader buffer = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(file));
        String line;
        String[] words;
        while ((line = buffer.readLine()) != null) {
            System.out.println(trailingStrings(line));
        }
    }

    public static int trailingStrings(String line) {
        int indexOfComma = line.indexOf(",");

        int secondStringLength = line.length()-indexOfComma-1;

        int firstStringLength = indexOfComma;

        if(firstStringLength < secondStringLength) {
            return 0;
        }
        int i = indexOfComma+1;
        int j = indexOfComma - secondStringLength;
        while(j<indexOfComma) {
            if(line.charAt(j) != line.charAt(i)) {
                return 0;
            }
            j++; i++;
        }
        return 1;
    }
}

• Memory Usage: 4784128 (bytes)
• Speed: 644 ms

If I instead split the line with "," and get the words and use String.endsWith(), I am getting better memory usage. This surprises me because in my first solution I am not creating new String objects, I just use one String.

import java.io.*;
public class Main {
    public static void main (String[] args) throws IOException {
        File file = new File(args[0]);
        BufferedReader buffer = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(file));
        String line;
        String[] words;
        while ((line = buffer.readLine()) != null) {
            words = line.split(",");
            String s1 = words[0];
            String s2 = words[1];
            if(s1.endsWith(s2)){
                System.out.println("1");
            } else {
                System.out.println("0");
            }
        }
    }
}

• Memory Usage: 413696 (bytes)
• Speed: 1047 ms

Why is my first solution taking up so much memory? Is it because of the int declarations? If I remove int declarations and use the values directly, memory usage reduced by half to 2412544 bytes but still way higher compared to second solution.

Answer 1

I suggest a functional answer for this problem (In ruby but should easily be translatable into Java):

def endswith(text, appendix)
    text.last(appendix.length) == appendix
end

I did not benchmark but this approach is likely to be faster as you are only using using 2 functions and a comparison instead of all the loops and ifs that you used.