[DP] LeetCode Regular Expression Matching

algorithm procedure

1. if the current text character is matching with the pattern character, which means the last character matched, then the result depends on the previous status: $res(r, c) = res(r-1, c-1)$
2. if the current text character is not matching with the pattern character, then result must be false

3. if the pattern character is *, then:

   • if the pattern character before the current one is not matching with the current text character, which means the current character has 0 occurrence in the * pattern, then $res(r, c) = res(r, c-2)$
   • if the character before the current pattern character is matching with the text character, which means the text character has one or more occurrence, then $res(r, c) = res(r-1, c)$
   • so the result is:
     $res(r, c) = res(r, c-2) || (res(r-1, c)(if char matches)$

example table

text = "aa", pattern = ".*", output = true

0	.	*
0	T	F
a	F	T
a	F	F

text = "aab", pattern = "c*a*b", output = true

0	c	*	a	*	b
0	T	F	T	F	T
a	F	F	F	T	T
a	F	F	F	F	T
b	F	F	F	F	F

code

class Solution {
private:
    bool charMatch(char s, char p) {
        return (s == p) || (p == '.');
    }
public:
    bool isMatch(string s, string p) {
    int R = s.length() + 1, C = p.length() + 1;
        vector<vector<bool>> res(R, vector<bool>(C, false));

        res[0][0] = true;
        for (int c = 1; c < C; ++c) {
            if (p[c-1] == '*') {
                res[0][c] = res[0][c-2];
            }
        }

        for (int r = 1; r < R; ++r) {
            for (int c = 1; c < C; ++c) {
                if (charMatch(s[r-1], p[c-1])) {
                    res[r][c] = res[r-1][c-1];
                } else if (p[c-1] == '*') {
                    res[r][c] = res[r][c-2];
                    if (charMatch(s[r-1], p[c-2])) {
                    res[r][c] = res[r][c] || res[r-1][c];
                    }
                } else {
                    res[r][c] = false;
                }
            }
        }

        return res[s.length()][p.length()];
    }
};