Problem

Given a list of words, we may encode it by writing a reference string S and a list of indexes A.

For example, if the list of words is ["time", "me", "bell"], we can write it as S = "time#bell#" and indexes = [0, 2, 5].

Then for each index, we will recover the word by reading from the reference string from that index until we reach a “#” character.

What is the length of the shortest reference string S possible that encodes the given words?

Example:

Input: words = ["time", "me", "bell"] Output: 10 Explanation: S = "time#bell#" and indexes = [0, 2, 5].

Note:

1. 1 <= words.length <= 2000.
2. 1 <= words[i].length <= 7.
3. Each word has only lowercase letters.

Idea

Remove all the words that are suffix of other words.

Solution

Time complexity: O(n*l^2)

Space complexity: O(n*l)