# Letter Distance by Helen Yu tags: strings, loops ## Summary > Given two words, the letter distance is calculated by taking the absolute value of the difference in character codes and summing up the difference. > If one word is longer than another, add the difference in lengths towards the score. > To illustrate: > letterDistance("house", "fly") = dist("h", "f") + dist("o", "l") + dist("u", "y") + dist(house.length, fly.leng ## Instructions Given two words, the **letter distance** is calculated by taking the absolute value of the difference in character codes and summing up the difference. If one word is longer than another, add the difference in lengths towards the score. To illustrate: ``` letterDistance("house", "fly") = dist("h", "f") + dist("o", "l") + dist("u", "y") + dist(house.length, fly.length) = |104 - 102| + |111 - 108| + |117 - 121| + |5 - 3| = 2 + 3 + 4 + 2 = 11 ``` ### Examples ``` letterDistance("sharp", "sharq") ➞ 1 letterDistance("abcde", "Abcde") ➞ 32 letterDistance("abcde", "bcdef") ➞ 5 ``` ### Notes - Always start comparing the two strings from their first letter. - Excess letters are not counted towards distance. - Capital letters are included.