【小熊刷题】implement strstr()

Question

Implement strstr(). Returns the index of the first occurrence of needle in haystack, or –1 if needle is not part of haystack.

*Difficulty: Easy, Frequency: High

My Solution

    /*if needle is not part of haystack.
     *find all the possible start of a needle in the haystack
     *then start pairing*/
    public int strStr(String haystack, String needle) {
        if(needle.isEmpty()) return 0;
        if(haystack.length() < needle.length()) return -1;
        char startCh = needle.charAt(0);
        int nLen = needle.length();
        ArrayList<Integer> possibleStart = new ArrayList<Integer>();
        for(int i = 0; i < haystack.length(); i++){
            if(haystack.charAt(i) == startCh) possibleStart.add(i);
            if(i > haystack.length()-nLen) break; // if left array's length is less than the needle's length break
    }
        for(int i = 0; i < possibleStart.size(); i++){
            if(ifMatchNeedle(possibleStart.get(i), haystack, needle)) return possibleStart.get(i);
        }
        return -1;
    }

    private boolean ifMatchNeedle(int start, String haystack, String needle){
      for(int i = 0; i < needle.length(); i++){
      if(start+i >= haystack.length() || needle.charAt(i) != haystack.charAt(start+i)) return false;
    }
    return true;
  }

Analysis by book - Scenarios

i. needle or haystack is empty. If needle is empty, always return 0. If haystack is empty, then there will always be no match (return –1) unless needle is also empty which 0 is returned.

ii. needle’s length is greater than haystack’s length. Should always return –1.

iii. needle is located at the end of haystack. For example, “aaaba” and “ba”. Catch possible off-by-one errors.

iv. needle occur multiple times in haystack. For example, “mississippi” and

“issi”. It should return index 2 as the first match of “issi”.

v. Imagine two very long strings of equal lengths = n, haystack = “aaa…aa” and

needle = “aaa…ab”. You should not do more than n character comparisons, or

else your code will get Time Limit Exceeded in OJ.

Standard Solution

public int strStr(String haystack, String needle) {
 for (int i = 0; ; i++) {
    for (int j = 0; ; j++) {
        if (j == needle.length()) return i;
        if (i + j == haystack.length()) return -1;
        if (needle.charAt(j) != haystack.charAt(i + j)) break;
    }
 }
}

Comments

My solutions is faster, but require some space occupy to remember the start of the needle, probably good for get all the occurrence of the needle

The Standard solution is much simple and no space required although a little slow.