How do you find all start indices of anagrams of p inside s?
PICTURE THIS: HOW TO EXPLAIN IT
Simple meaning
Maintain a window of length p with character counts
WHY — Sliding Window instead of guessing?
Why interviewers care about Sliding Window:
question about Sliding Window.
trade-offs, and what you would actually do on a DSA project - not buzzwords.
Name the idea, why it exists, then one short example.
End with when you use it and one common pitfall.
STEPS — What happens step by step?
Before you speak the answer, walk the interviewer through these steps:
- 1Maintain a window of
length p with character counts
- 2slide by adding s[i]
and removing s[i-len(p)], and record i-len(p)+1 when counts match.
- 3Time is O(|s| +
|p|) with O(1) alphabet space.
- 4Comparing 26 counters each
step is still O(n) given a fixed alphabet.
- 5Common mistake
What juniors usually get wrong.
- 6Close
When you pick this over the alternative.
EXAMPLE — See it in action
Here's a short line you can speak, broken into clear beats:
Note: Adapt this scaffold to your own project — keep it under 60–90 seconds.
Key takeaway
Maintain a window of length p with character counts slide by adding s[i] and removing s[i-len(p)], and record i-len(p)+1 when counts match.