Wildcard Dictionary Matching

Company: eBay

Role: Software Engineer

Category: Coding & Algorithms

Difficulty: medium

Interview Round: Technical Screen

Quick Answer: This question evaluates a candidate's ability to design custom pattern-matching logic beyond simple substring or regex lookups, handling both fixed-length and variable-length wildcard tokens. It tests string processing skills, dynamic programming or backtracking technique, and time-complexity analysis across a dictionary of words. Such questions are common in coding interviews to assess algorithmic problem-solving and precise handling of edge cases in string matching.