[待续]Convert string to palindrome string with minimum insertions

Given a string, find the minimum number of characters to be inserted to convert it to palindrome.

      For Eg :-

           ab:      Number of insertions required is 1. bab

           aa:      Number of insertions required is 0. aa

           abcd:   Number of insertions required is 3. dcbabcd

           abcda:  Number of insertions required is 2. adcbcda

 

Dynamic Programming based Solution
Suppose we want to find the minimum number of insertions in string “abcde”:

                      abcde
	        /       |      \
	       /        |        \
           bcde         abcd       bcd  <- case 3 is discarded as str[l] != str[h]
       /   |   \       /   |   \
      /    |    \     /    |    \
     cde   bcd  cd   bcd abc bc
   / | \  / | \ /|\ / | \
de cd d cd bc c………………….

The substrings in bold show that the recursion to be terminated and the recursion tree cannot originate from there. Substring in the same color indicates overlapping subproblems.

How to reuse solutions of subproblems?
We can create a table to store results of subproblems so that they can be used directly if same subproblem is encountered again.

The below table represents the stored values for the string abcde.

a b c d e
----------
0 1 2 3 4
0 0 1 2 3 
0 0 0 1 2 
0 0 0 0 1 
0 0 0 0 0

How to fill the table?
The table should be filled in diagonal fashion. For the string abcde, 0….4, the following should be order in which the table is filled:

Gap = 1:
(0, 1) (1, 2) (2, 3) (3, 4)

Gap = 2:
(0, 2) (1, 3) (2, 4)

Gap = 3:
(0, 3) (1, 4)

Gap = 4:
(0, 4)

Let S[i, j] represents a sub-string of string S starting from index i and ending at index j(both inclusive) and c[i, j] be the optimal solution for S[i, j].

Obviously, c[i, j] = 0 if i >= j.

In general, we have the recurrence:

 

 

Another Dynamic Programming Solution (Variation of Longest Common Subsequence Problem)
The problem of finding minimum insertions can also be solved using Longest Common Subsequence (LCS) Problem. If we find out LCS of string and its reverse, we know how many maximum characters can form a palindrome. We need insert remaining characters. Following are the steps.
1) Find the length of LCS of input string and its reverse. Let the length be ‘l’.
2) The minimum number insertions needed is length of input string minus ‘l’.

 

From:

http://www.geeksforgeeks.org/dynamic-programming-set-28-minimum-insertions-to-form-a-palindrome/

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10729282/convert-string-to-palindrome-string-with-minimum-insertions