文章标题

Regular expression matching（正则匹配）

题目描述：
Implement regular expression matching with support for ‘.’ and ‘*’.
‘.’ Matches any single character.
‘*’ Matches zero or more of the preceding element.
The matching should cover the entire input string (not partial).
The function prototype should be:
bool isMatch(const char *s, const char *p)
Some examples:
isMatch(“aa”,”a”) → false
isMatch(“aa”,”aa”) → true
isMatch(“aaa”,”aa”) → false
isMatch(“aa”, “a*”) → true
isMatch(“aa”, “.*”) → true
isMatch(“ab”, “.*”) → true
isMatch(“aab”, “c*a*b”) → true

问题分析：
参考串的元素只能是英文字母，输入串的元素既能是字母也可以是”.”和“”，其中“.”能和任何字母进行匹配，也就是通配符；但是输入串不能以“ ”开头，因为“*”的用途是重复其前面相邻字母0~n次，因此前面必须存在其他字符.
思路分析：采用DP能解此题
记f[i][j]为s[0~i-1]与p[0~i-1]是否匹配的标识，当s[0~i-1]=p[0~i-1]时，f[i][j]=1,否则f[i][j]=0
现在来考虑f[i][j]的状态转移方程
(1)当p[j-1]!=*时，s[j-1]=p[j-1]且f[i-1][j-1]=1时，f[i][j]=1,否则f[i][j]=0;
(2)当p[j-1]=*时，又分为两种情形
A)p[j-2]重复了零次，此时s[0~i-1]与p[0~i-1]匹配成功与否取决于s[0~i-1]=？p[0~i-3]，即f[i][j]=f[i][j-2];
B)p[j-2]至少被重复了一次，此时匹配成功的一个条件是s[i-1]=p[j-2]，另外f[i-1][j]必须为1，即f[i][j]=s[i-1]=p[j-2] &&f[i-1][j];

class Solution {
public:
    bool isMatch(string s, string p) {
        /**
         * f[i][j]: if s[0..i-1] matches p[0..j-1]
         * if p[j - 1] != '*'
         *      f[i][j] = f[i - 1][j - 1] && s[i - 1] == p[j - 1]
         * if p[j - 1] == '*', denote p[j - 2] with x
         *      f[i][j] is true iff any of the following is true
         *      1) "x*" repeats 0 time and matches empty: f[i][j - 2]
         *      2) "x*" repeats >= 1 times and matches "x*x": s[i - 1] == x && f[i - 1][j]
         * '.' matches any single character
         */
        int m = s.size(), n = p.size();
        vector<vector<bool>> f(m + 1, vector<bool>(n + 1, false));

        f[0][0] = true;
        for (int i = 1; i <= m; i++)
            f[i][0] = false;
        // p[0.., j - 3, j - 2, j - 1] matches empty iff p[j - 1] is '*' and p[0..j - 3] matches empty
        for (int j = 1; j <= n; j++)
            f[0][j] = j > 1 && '*' == p[j - 1] && f[0][j - 2];

        for (int i = 1; i <= m; i++)
            for (int j = 1; j <= n; j++)
                if (p[j - 1] != '*')
                    f[i][j] = f[i - 1][j - 1] && (s[i - 1] == p[j - 1] || '.' == p[j - 1]);
                else
                    // p[0] cannot be '*' so no need to check "j > 1" here
                    f[i][j] = f[i][j - 2] || (s[i - 1] == p[j - 2] || '.' == p[j - 2]) && f[i - 1][j];

        return f[m][n];
    }
};