I jumped straight to coding before fully thinking through the edge cases.
First, check if the two sentences have the same length; if not, return false immediately. Then, iterate through each word pair and verify that they are either identical or form a similar pair by checking against a set of normalized pairs (e.g., sorted tuples). If all pairs pass, return true; otherwise, return false.
Pro tip: Mention that similarity is not transitive and order doesn't matter, so you'll store pairs in a set with sorted tuples to ensure O(1) lookups and avoid directional issues. Also, clarify that you assume the input is well-formed and that the list of similar pairs may contain duplicates.
Confirm that sentences are arrays of words, similarity is not transitive, order within a pair doesn't matter, and sentences must be the same length. Ask about case sensitivity and whether words can be empty.
Convert each similar pair into a normalized form (e.g., sort the two words alphabetically) and store them in a hash set for O(1) lookup.
If the lengths of the two sentences differ, immediately return false.
For each index i, if words are not identical, check if the normalized pair (sorted) exists in the set. If any pair fails, return false.
If all pairs pass, return true. State time complexity O(n + m) where n is sentence length and m is number of similar pairs, and space complexity O(m) for the set.
AI-generated suggestions, not part of the candidate's original notes. May be inaccurate — verify before relying on them.