alt Hacker NewsI don't understand how you jumped to the membership test instead of literally the .find() method on a string?
The interviewer is not asking to solve a problem here, they're asking for a simple ability to follow instructions, hence the offer to use Google to find the correct answer.
You could make a very solid case for using "in" (it is 2-4x faster), but only after you've solved the task at hand, this is what is expected in interviews. Not knowing the interview meta makes an average Joe basically unhireable in this market.
The unfortunate answer is just that I didn’t think of .find before thinking of “in,” haha. Nothing too clever going on in my head.
The existence of a more conventional .find method does some damage to my original point. Oops.