LeetCode 44. Wildcard Matching

Problem Statement

(Source) Implement wildcard pattern matching with support for '?' and '*'.

'?' Matches any single character.
'*' Matches any sequence of characters (including the empty sequence).

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", "*") → true
isMatch("aa", "a*") → true
isMatch("ab", "?*") → true
isMatch("aab", "c*a*b") → false

Tags: Dynamic Programming, Backtracking, Greedy, String.

Solution 1 - Backtracking

class Solution(object):
    def isMatch(self, s, p):
        """
        :type s: str
        :type p: str
        :rtype: bool
        """
        n, m = len(s), len(p)
        i, j, next_match, star = 0, 0, 0, -1
        while i < n:
            if j < m and (s[i] == p[j] or p[j] == '?'):
                i, j = i+1, j+1
            elif j < m and p[j] == '*':
                star = j
                j += 1
                next_match = i
            elif star != -1:
                next_match += 1
                i = next_match
                j = star + 1
            else:
                return False
        while j < m and p[j] == '*':
            j += 1

        return j == m     

Reference:
(1) https://discuss.leetcode.com/topic/3040/linear-runtime-and-constant-space-solution