Edit Distance

题目描述：

Given two words word1 and word2, find the minimum number of steps required to convert word1 to word2. (each operation is counted as 1 step.)

You have the following 3 operations permitted on a word:

a) Insert a character
b) Delete a character
c) Replace a character

此题和Distinct Subsequences极为相似：

如果我们用 i 表示当前字符串 A 的下标，j 表示当前字符串 B 的下标。 如果我们用d[i, j] 来表示A[1, ... , i] B[1, ... , j] 之间的最少编辑操作数。那么我们会有以下发现：
1. d[0, j] = j;
2. d[i, 0] = i;
3. d[i, j] = d[i-1, j - 1] if A[i] == B[j]
4. d[i, j] = min(d[i-1, j - 1], d[i, j - 1], d[i-1, j]) + 1  if A[i] != B[j]
所以，要找出最小编辑操作数，只需要从底自上判断就可以了。

代码如下：

public class Solution {
    public static int minDistance(String word1, String word2) {  
        if (word1.length() == 0) return word2.length();  
        if (word2.length() == 0) return word1.length();  
        int[][] distance = new int[word1.length() + 1][word2.length() + 1];  
        for (int i = 0; i <= word1.length(); i++) {  
            distance[i][0] = i;  
        }  
        for (int i = 0; i <= word2.length(); i++) {  
            distance[0][i] = i;  
        }  
        for (int i = 1; i <= word1.length(); i++) {  
            for (int j = 1; j <= word2.length(); j++) {  
                if (word1.charAt(i - 1) == word2.charAt(j - 1)) {  
                    distance[i][j] = distance[i-1][j-1];  
                } else {  
                    distance[i][j] = Integer.min(distance[i-1][j], Integer.min(distance[i][j-1], distance[i-1][j-1])) + 1;  
                }  
            }  
        }  
        return distance[word1.length()][word2.length()];  
    }  
}