The easy way

Cool!

Just when I think I did good, someone else does it in one line TT

Been practicing python for a week. Need about another year :')

That´s good point.

If this kind of optimization is a bottle neck for you, then you shouln't be using Python anyway over something like C

Yes, theoretically. Your solution is the best one (and very cheap for memory). Now, practically, using loops with conditional branches is something slow in general, and builtin functions like split and min are optimized in Python, so the benefice if probably not relevant for the inputs that are tested here. It would be interesting to benchmark this.

Doesnt this solution conduct two passes? - one for splitting, and one for finding the min? So for larger strings this would be less efficient than a single for loop.

Does this account for differences in punctuation/upper vs lower case?

You can always use isqrt

Indeed , Short code = Better Life

based

Lol I thought I hit the Jackpot with this one but I guess I am not the unique one... 😅😂