#824

Easy

auto_awesomeString-driven solution strategy

LeetCode Problem Workspace

Goat Latin

Convert a sentence to Goat Latin by transforming each word based on vowel rules and incremental suffixes efficiently.

Problem Statement

Given a string 'sentence' containing words separated by single spaces, convert it into Goat Latin following specific rules. Each word consists only of uppercase and lowercase English letters. Words that start with vowels retain their first letter and append 'ma', while words starting with consonants move the first letter to the end and append 'ma'. Additionally, each word gains a number of trailing 'a's equal to its position index in the sentence, starting from 1.

Return the final sentence after converting all words to Goat Latin. Maintain original capitalization for each word, and preserve spaces between words. The input sentence has no leading or trailing spaces, and words are only separated by single spaces, making it suitable for a string-driven solution strategy focusing on consistent iteration and transformation.

Examples

Example 1

Input: sentence = "I speak Goat Latin"

Output: "Imaa peaksmaaa oatGmaaaa atinLmaaaaa"

Example details omitted.

Example 2

Input: sentence = "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog"

Output: "heTmaa uickqmaaa rownbmaaaa oxfmaaaaa umpedjmaaaaaa overmaaaaaaa hetmaaaaaaaa azylmaaaaaaaaa ogdmaaaaaaaaaa"

Example details omitted.

Constraints

1 <= sentence.length <= 150
sentence consists of English letters and spaces.
sentence has no leading or trailing spaces.
All the words in sentence are separated by a single space.

Solution Approach

Split and Transform Each Word

Divide the sentence into words using spaces, then iterate through each word. For vowels, append 'ma'; for consonants, move the first letter to the end and append 'ma'. Track word index to append the correct number of 'a's.

Recombine Words into Sentence

After processing each word, join them back with a single space to maintain the original sentence structure. This ensures the final output follows Goat Latin formatting without altering word order.

Edge Case Handling

Check for empty sentences, single-word sentences, and capitalization consistency. Since the string length is limited, iterating once over words prevents inefficiencies and avoids common off-by-one errors when appending 'a's.

Complexity Analysis

Metric	Value
Time	Depends on the final approach
Space	Depends on the final approach

Time complexity is O(n) where n is the total number of characters, because each character is processed once during word transformation. Space complexity is O(n) due to splitting the sentence and storing transformed words.

What Interviewers Usually Probe

Expect clear handling of vowels versus consonants in string transformations.
Pay attention to appending the correct number of 'a's per word index.
Ensure capitalization and spacing are preserved exactly as input.

Common Pitfalls or Variants

Common pitfalls

Forgetting to append incremental 'a's according to word position.
Misclassifying uppercase vowels or consonants due to case sensitivity.
Incorrectly joining words and adding extra or missing spaces.

Follow-up variants

Modify rules to add different suffixes per word index instead of 'a's.
Handle sentences with punctuation interspersed between words.
Apply Goat Latin rules to multilingual strings with accented characters.

FAQ

What is the main pattern used to solve Goat Latin?

The pattern is string-driven: split, transform each word based on vowels or consonants, then recombine, ensuring index-based suffixes are correct.

How do I handle uppercase letters in Goat Latin?

Check vowels in a case-insensitive way, but preserve the original letter's case when transforming each word.

Can this approach handle very long sentences?

Yes, as long as the sentence length is within constraints; the solution iterates once over all characters efficiently.

What common mistakes should I avoid in this problem?

Avoid miscounting 'a's per word, mishandling capitalization, and introducing extra spaces when joining words.

Is there a faster approach than splitting by spaces?

Splitting by spaces is already optimal for string-driven processing; alternative methods increase complexity without clear benefit.

terminal

Solution

Solution 1

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class Solution:
    def toGoatLatin(self, sentence: str) -> str:
        ans = []
        for i, word in enumerate(sentence.split()):
            if word.lower()[0] not in ['a', 'e', 'i', 'o', 'u']:
                word = word[1:] + word[0]
            word += 'ma'
            word += 'a' * (i + 1)
            ans.append(word)
        return ' '.join(ans)

Continue Practicing

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