Can One String Be Rotated Into Another?

Efficiently Check If One String Is a Shifted Version of Another

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Problem

Given two strings A and B, return whether or not A can be shifted some number of times to get B.

For example, if A is abcde and B is cdeab, return true. If A is abc and B is acb, return false.

Problem Breakdown

We are given two strings A and B, and we need to check if A can be shifted (rotated) a certain number of times to get B.

Example

• A = “abcde” and B = “cdeab” → return true because "abcde" can be shifted to form "cdeab".
• A = “abc” and B = “acb” → return false because no shift will make "abc" become "acb".

Approach

Length Check: First, if the lengths of A and B are different, it’s impossible for one string to be a shifted version of the other.

String Rotation Insight: If we concatenate A with itself (i.e., A + A), all possible rotations of A will be present as a substring within this new string. For example:

• A = “abcde”
• A + A = “abcdeabcde” The string “cdeab” will be a substring of…