Dynamic Programing -- Leetcode problem 62. Unique Paths

• 描述：A robot is located at the top-left corner of a m x n grid (marked ‘Start’ in the diagram below).

The robot can only move either down or right at any point in time. The robot is trying to reach the bottom-right corner of the grid (marked ‘Finish’ in the diagram below).

How many possible unique paths are there?

Note: m and n will be at most 100.

• 分析：这道题要求找到机器人到终点的全部可能路径的数目，其中机器人只能向右或向下走
• 思路一：使用递归求解

class Solution {
public:
    int uniquePaths(int m, int n) {
        if (m == 1 || n == 1) return 1;
        else return uniquePaths(m - 1, n) + uniquePaths(m, n - 1);
    }
};

很不幸会超时，这时就需要动态规划的思路来求解。
- 思路二：使用动态规划求解，对于某一点（i，j）。从原点到（i，j）的路径数目可以表示为，dis[i][j] = dis[i-1][j] + dis[i][j-1]，由此可以用循环来解决问题。

class Solution {
public:
    int uniquePaths(int m, int n) {
        int dis[m][n] = {0};
        for (int i = 0; i < m; i++) {
            for (int j = 0; j < n; j++) {
                if (i == 0 || j == 0) dis[i][j] = 1;
                else dis[i][j] = dis[i][j - 1] + dis[i - 1][j];
            }
        }
        return dis[m - 1][n - 1];
    }
};

动态规划之所以在时间上优于递归是因为动态规划可以利用上一步的结果计算，而递归却只能每次重复操作。