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This is a medium difficulty Coding & Algorithms question, commonly asked during Technical Screen rounds at SoFi.

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This question is commonly asked for Software Engineer candidates at SoFi during technical interviews.

Format words into wrapped/justified lines

Q: Format words into wrapped/justified lines

This question evaluates practical programming skills in string processing, greedy packing, and careful handling of spacing and edge cases, and falls under the Coding & Algorithms domain.

You are given a list of words (strings with no spaces) and an integer maxWidth.

Implement text formatting in two variants:

Variant A — Basic word wrap (no padding)

Return lines by packing words greedily from left to right:

Each line contains as many words as possible.
Words in a line are separated by a single space .
Do not pad the end of the line with extra spaces.

Variant B — Full justification (fixed width)

Return lines of exactly maxWidth characters:

Pack words greedily as in Variant A.
For every line except the last :
- Distribute spaces between words so that the line length is exactly maxWidth .
- If the spaces do not divide evenly, the leftmost gaps get more spaces.
- If a line has only one word, left-justify it and pad trailing spaces to reach maxWidth .
For the last line:
- Left-justify: words separated by a single space, then pad trailing spaces to reach maxWidth .

Input

words: List[str]
maxWidth: int

Output

List[str] lines formatted according to the chosen variant.

Constraints (typical)

1 <= len(words) <= 10^4
1 <= len(words[i]) <= maxWidth
1 <= maxWidth <= 100

Variant B — Full justification (fixed width)

Return lines of exactly maxWidth characters:

Pack words greedily as in Variant A.

For every line except the last :

Distribute spaces between words so that the line length is exactly maxWidth .
If the spaces do not divide evenly, the leftmost gaps get more spaces.
If a line has only one word, left-justify it and pad trailing spaces to reach maxWidth .

For the last line:

Left-justify: words separated by a single space, then pad trailing spaces to reach maxWidth .

Input

words: List[str]

maxWidth: int

Output

List[str] lines formatted according to the chosen variant.

Constraints (typical)

1 <= len(words) <= 10^4

1 <= len(words[i]) <= maxWidth

1 <= maxWidth <= 100

Format words into wrapped/justified lines

Quick Overview

Variant A — Basic word wrap (no padding)

Variant B — Full justification (fixed width)

Input

Output

Constraints (typical)

Comments (0)

Format words into wrapped/justified lines

Quick Overview

Variant A — Basic word wrap (no padding)

Variant B — Full justification (fixed width)

Input

Output

Constraints (typical)

Comments (0)