10. Regular Expression Matching

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

public class Solution {
    public boolean isMatch(String s, String p) {
        // base case
        if (p.length() == 0) {
            return s.length() == 0;
        }

        // special case
        if (p.length() == 1) {

            // if the length of s is 0, return false
            if (s.length() < 1) {
                return false;
            }

            // if the first does not match, return false
            else if ((p.charAt(0) != s.charAt(0)) && (p.charAt(0) != '.')) {
                return false;
            }

            // otherwise, compare the rest of the string of s and p.
            else {
                return isMatch(s.substring(1), p.substring(1));
            }
        }

        // case 1: when the second char of p is not '*'
        if (p.charAt(1) != '*') {
            if (s.length() < 1) {
                return false;
            }
            if ((p.charAt(0) != s.charAt(0)) && (p.charAt(0) != '.')) {
                return false;
            } else {
                return isMatch(s.substring(1), p.substring(1));
            }
        }

        // case 2: when the second char of p is '*', complex case.
        else {
            // case 2.1: a char & '*' can stand for 0 element
            if (isMatch(s, p.substring(2))) {
                return true;
            }

            // case 2.2: a char & '*' can stand for 1 or more preceding element,
            // so try every sub string
            int i = 0;
            while (i < s.length()
                    && (s.charAt(i) == p.charAt(0) || p.charAt(0) == '.')) {
                if (isMatch(s.substring(i + 1), p.substring(2))) {
                    return true;
                }
                i++;
            }
            return false;
        }
    }
}