Add is_palindrome_ignore_case_and_spaces to strings/palindrome.py

[kaviya-ns]

Describe your change:

Adds a new function is_palindrome_ignore_case_and_spaces to strings/palindrome.py
that checks whether a string is a palindrome while ignoring letter case and spaces.
Existing functions in the file are unchanged.

• Add an algorithm?
• Fix a bug or typo in an existing algorithm?
• Add or change doctests? -- Note: Please avoid changing both code and tests in a single pull request.
• Documentation change?

Checklist:

• I have read CONTRIBUTING.md.
• This pull request is all my own work -- I have not plagiarized.
• I know that pull requests will not be merged if they fail the automated tests.
• This PR only changes one algorithm file. To ease review, please open separate PRs for separate algorithms.
• All new Python files are placed inside an existing directory.
• All filenames are in all lowercase characters with no spaces or dashes.
• All functions and variable names follow Python naming conventions.
• All function parameters and return values are annotated with Python type hints.
• All functions have doctests that pass the automated testing.
• All new algorithms include at least one URL that points to Wikipedia or another similar explanation.
• If this pull request resolves one or more open issues then the description above includes the issue number(s) with a closing keyword.

[Abhirai2006]

Nice small addition, thanks! Two things I noticed though:

The doctest with "Was it a car or a cat I saw?" returns False, but that's kind of an accident — it's only False because the trailing "?" doesn't get stripped (the function only removes spaces, not punctuation). If you actually remove the "?", that phrase is a real palindrome ignoring case/spaces. So the test passes but not really for the reason you'd want it to. Might be worth swapping in a cleaner example, or handling punctuation too so the function does what its name says.

Also the new assert in main (is_palindrome(key) == is_palindrome_ignore_case_and_spaces(key)) is checked against the existing test_data, but none of those strings have spaces or mixed case — so it's not really testing the new behavior, just repeating the old check. Adding one or two mixed-case/spaced entries would make that assertion actually mean something.

Otherwise looks good, happy to approve once these are sorted.

[kaviya-ns]

Hi @Abhirai2006 , Thanks for the feedback! I've updated the function to also strip punctuation, so 'Was it a car or a cat I saw?' is now a genuine positive example rather than an accidental one. Also added a separate test_data_ignore_case_and_spaces dict with mixed-case, spaced, and punctuated entries, and an assert loop in main, so the new behavior is actually being tested rather than just repeating the existing checks.

[zain-cs]

Logic looks correct and all doctests check out — left two minor notes inline.

[zain-cs]

Nice implementation and the docstring covers it well. Small naming nit: since .isalnum() also strips punctuation, not just case and spaces, might be worth reflecting that in the function name too (or it's fine as-is if the broader scope was intentional).

[kaviya-ns]

The broader scope (also stripping punctuation) was intentional. Since a fully descriptive name would get pretty long, I added a note in the docstring clarifying it also ignores punctuation, so the behavior is explicit there. Let me know if you'd still like me to rename it and I can update it.

[zain-cs]

These benchmark timing changes for is_palindrome, is_palindrome_slice, and is_palindrome_recursive look unrelated to this PR's actual purpose — was this from a re-run on a different machine? Might be worth reverting these lines to keep the diff focused just on the new function.

[kaviya-ns]

thanks! . those were leftover from a local re-run on my machine. I've reverted them back to the original values.