10.9 Generate Parentheses

Link: https://oj.leetcode.com/problems/generate-parentheses/

My first attempt: the conditions in dfs are wrong!

public class Solution {
    public ArrayList<String> generateParenthesis(int n) {
        ArrayList<String> result = new ArrayList<String>();
        dfs(n, n, "", result);
        return result;
    }
    
    public void dfs(int l, int r, String tmp, ArrayList<String> result){
        if(l == 0 && r == 0){
            result.add(tmp);
            return;
        }
        if(l == 0 || r == 0) return;
        tmp = tmp + "(";
        dfs(l-1, r, tmp+"(", result);
        tmp = tmp + ")";
        dfs(l, r-1, tmp, result);
    }
}

Correct answer:

The conditions should be: (1) If there are still left parentheses (, add (; (2) If there are more right ) than left (, add right). 

public class Solution {
    public ArrayList<String> generateParenthesis(int n) {
        ArrayList<String> result = new ArrayList<String>();
        dfs(n, n, "", result);
        return result;
    }
    
    public void dfs(int l, int r, String tmp, ArrayList<String> result){
        if(l == 0 && r == 0){
            result.add(tmp);
            return;
        }
        if(l > 0){
            dfs(l-1, r, tmp + "(", result);
        }
        if(l < r){
            dfs(l, r-1, tmp + ")", result);
        }
    }
}

The second condition cannot be changed to : if right ) >0. Otherwise, we will have wrong answer:

Input: n = 1

Ouput: ["()", ")("]

Answer: ["()"]

This is because: 

dfs(1, 1, "", res)

If we use

        if(r > 0){
            dfs(l, r-1, tmp + ")", result);
        }

 then we allow adding ")" before "(", which is wrong. So 

        if(l < r){
            dfs(l, r-1, tmp + ")", result);
        }

just means that we MUST add left before right. 

问题：在http://blog.csdn.net/linhuanmars/article/details/19873463， 作者说本题的模型也是卡特兰数。.在

Unique Binary Search Trees

 里用过。在那道题里，含义是，一个n个节点的树，可以有i 个左节点，n-1-i个右节点。

但是本题里，卡特兰模型的实际含义是什么？@8.29.2014

http://cs.lmu.edu/~ray/notes/binarytrees/