Receiving TabError: inconsistent use of tabs and spaces in indentation in python program

Question

I'm working on a leetcode problem, and the problem is:

Given a list of words and two words word1 and word2, return the shortest distance between these two words in the list.

For example, Assume that words = ["practice", "makes", "perfect", "coding", "makes"].

Given word1 = “coding”, word2 = “practice”, return 3. Given word1 = "makes", word2 = "coding", return 1.

The code I have so far:

    class Solution(object):
    def shortestDistance(self, words, word1, word2):
        count = 0
        count2 = 0

        for i in word1:
            count+=1
            for j in word2:
                count2 += 1

            if count > count2:
                return (count-count2)
            else:
                return (count2-count1)

s = Solution()
print(s.shortestDistance(["practice", "makes", "perfect", "coding", "makes"], "coding", "practice")

I've tried messing around with the tabbing and I still can't find a right way to align the code.

*the method is indented but for some reason would not indent here just fyi

Copy the code you posted back into your program and all the tabs will be gone. Alternatively, hit `ctrl+h` and replace `\t` with four spaces. — Aran-Fey, Mar 05 '17 at 00:53
Possible duplicate of ["inconsistent use of tabs and spaces in indentation"](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5685406/inconsistent-use-of-tabs-and-spaces-in-indentation) — Juan T, Mar 05 '17 at 01:12

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 05 '17 at 01:25

I'm not sure what indentation issues you're talking about - your method definition should be indented one further, but beyond that, it seems to work (meaning it runs). But your logic looks wrong, based on my understanding. Try this:

class Solution(object):
    def shortestDistance(self, words, word1, word2):
        count = 0

        for word in words:
            count += 1
            if word == word1:
                count1 = count
            if word == word2:
                count2 = count

        if count1 > count2:
            return (count1-count2)
        else:
            return (count2-count1)

s = Solution()

Note that this will have some funny behavior when you have duplicates of the same word (e.g. make and make) - it will count the position of whatever one comes last in the list. But it should be much closer to what you're trying to do.

Receiving TabError: inconsistent use of tabs and spaces in indentation in python program

1 Answers1