LeetCode #10: Regular Expression Matching

Problem Statement

(Source) 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

Analysis

dp[i][j]: the matching result of s[:i] and p[:j].

• Time Complexity: $O(mn)$
• Space Complexity: $O(mn)$

where $m$ and $n$ are the length of $s$ and $p$ respectively.

---

Tags: Dynamic Programming.

Solution

class Solution(object):
    def isMatch(self, s, p):
        """
        :type s: str
        :type p: str
        :rtype: bool
        """

        m, n = len(s), len(p)
        dp = [[False for j in xrange(n + 1)] for i in xrange(m + 1)]
        dp[0][0] = True

        # Assume valid RE doesn't have '*' as the first character.
        for j in xrange(1, n + 1):
            if p[j - 1] == '*':
                dp[0][j] = dp[0][j - 1]
                if j > 1:
                    dp[0][j] = (dp[0][j] or dp[0][j - 2])

        # If string is empty, then try to match p with empty string.
        if m == 0:
            return dp[0][n]

        # Fill in the dp matrix.
        for i in xrange(0, m + 1):            
            for j in xrange(1, n + 1):
                if p[j - 1] == '.' or p[j - 1] == s[i - 1]:
                    dp[i][j] = dp[i - 1][j - 1]
                elif p[j - 1] == '*':
                    if dp[i][j - 2]:
                        dp[i][j] = True
                    elif dp[i - 1][j] and (s[i - 1] == p[j - 2] or p[j - 2] == '.'):
                        dp[i][j] = True

        return dp[m][n]                 

References

(1) http://bangbingsyb.blogspot.com.au/2014/11/leetcode-regular-expression-matching.html
(2) http://articles.leetcode.com/regular-expression-matching