[LeetCode] 267. Palindrome Permutation II

Problem

Given a string s, return all the palindromic permutations (without duplicates) of it. Return an empty list if no palindromic permutation could be form.

Example

Given s = "aabb", return ["abba","baab"].
Given s = "abc", return [].

Solution

class Solution {
    public List<String> generatePalindromes(String s) {
        List<String> res = new ArrayList<>();
        if (s == null || s.length() == 0) return res;
        
        //create a map to record counts of chars: int[256]
        //count the chars that have odd number of count: <= 1 means valid palindrome
        int[] map = new int[256];
        int odd = 0;
        for (char ch: s.toCharArray()) {
            map[ch]++;
            if ((map[ch]&1) == 1) odd++;
            else odd--;
        }
        if (odd > 1) return res;
        
        //get mid string: should have length of 1 or 0
        String mid = "";
        int halfLen = 0;
        for (int i = 0; i < 256; i++) {
            if (map[i] > 0) {
                //find the odd counted char, add to mid
                if ((map[i]&1) == 1) {
                    mid += (char)i;
                    map[i]--;
                }
                //reduce count to half for each char
                map[i] /= 2;
                //update half palindrome length
                halfLen += map[i];
            }
        }
        
        dfs(map, "", mid, halfLen, res);
        return res;
    }
    
    private void dfs(int[] map, String temp, String mid, int len, List<String> res) {
        if (temp.length() == len) {
            StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(temp).reverse();
            res.add(temp+mid+sb.toString());
            return;
        }
        for (int i = 0; i < 256; i++) {
            if (map[i] > 0) {
                map[i]--;
                dfs(map, temp+(char)i, mid, len, res);
                map[i]++;
            }
        }
    }
}