List the Difference Between Two Strings

This question is essentially asking you to discuss a method of determining the differences between two string values in terms of their characters or character positioning. The question is often asked in the context of algorithmic problem-solving in computer programming. You would likely be expected to solve the problem programmatically.

Here are some key points to consider in your response:

• What is a 'string' in computer science and programming context?
• How strings are indexed and how characters are accessed in a string?
• Conceptualize, or even write out, a basic algorithm that could take two strings, compare them, and return the differences.

In a programming context, a string is a data type characterized by a sequence of characters. These characters may be letters, numbers, special characters, or spaces. Each character in the string has a position, starting from position zero.

For instance, in Python, you might define a function to compare two strings and list their differences as follows:

def diff_strings(str1, str2):
    diff = [i for i in range(min(len(str1), len(str2))) if str1[i] != str2[i]]
    diff += list(range(min(len(str1), len(str2)), max(len(str1), len(str2))))
    return diff

This function iterates over the characters in each string, comparing them at each index. If they are not identical, it adds the index to a list of differences. It then adds any extra indices from the end of the longer string to this list. The function returns a list of indices of differences between the two strings.

In JavaScript, the process is quite similar. Here's an example:

function diffStrings(str1, str2) {
    var diffs = [];
    var longestLength = Math.max(str1.length, str2.length);
    for (var i = 0; i < longestLength; i++) {
        if (str1[i] !== str2[i]) {
            diffs.push(i);
        }
    }
    return diffs;
}

This JavaScript function works in a similar manner. It first determines the length of the longer string. After that, it loops through every index up to the length of the longer string and pushes each index where the two strings have differing characters to the 'diffs' array. This array holding indices of differences is the final result.