LeetCode 10. Regular Expression Matching (javascript)

Given an input string (s) and a pattern (p), implement regular expression matching with support for '.' and '*' where:

'.' Matches any single character.
'*' Matches zero or more of the preceding element.

The matching should cover the entire input string (not partial).

Example 1:

Input: s = "aa", p = "a"
Output: false
Explanation: "a" does not match the entire string "aa".

Example 2:

Input: s = "aa", p = "a*"
Output: true
Explanation: '*' means zero or more of the preceding element, 'a'. Therefore, by repeating 'a' once, it becomes "aa".

Example 3:

Input: s = "ab", p = ".*"
Output: true
Explanation: ".*" means "zero or more (*) of any character (.)".

Example 4:

Input: s = "aab", p = "c*a*b"
Output: true
Explanation: c can be repeated 0 times, a can be repeated 1 time. Therefore, it matches "aab".

Example 5:

Input: s = "mississippi", p = "mis*is*p*."
Output: false

Constraints:

0 <= s.length <= 20
0 <= p.length <= 30
s contains only lowercase English letters.
p contains only lowercase English letters, '.', and '*'.
It is guaranteed for each appearance of the character '*', there will be a previous valid character to match.

Idea:

Backtracking / Depth-first search (DFS)

There are two normal cases without consideration of *:

1. s === p
2. s !== p, but p === '.' and s is any character

And then let’s consider how to handle the pattern *:

If we have a x* in the pattern(x stands for any character), we may ignore this part of
the pattern, or delete a matching character in the text

// no match: aa , c*                || match: aaa , a*
 (isMatch(s, p.substring(2)) || (first_match && isMatch(s.substring(1), p)));

According to these analyses, we can construct a depth-first search algorithm, it’s a recursive algorithm.

Solution:

/**
 * @param {string} s
 * @param {string} p
 * @return {boolean}
 */
var isMatch = function(s, p) {
    let sLen = s.length;
    let pLen = p.length;
    if (pLen === 0) return sLen === 0;
    let first_match = (sLen !== 0 && (p[0] === s[0] || p[0] === '.'));
    
    // If a star is present in the pattern, it will be in the 
    // second position p[1]. Then, we may ignore this part of 
    // the pattern, or delete a matching character in the text. 
    // If we have a match on the remaining strings after any of 
    // these operations, then the initial inputs matched.
    if (pLen >= 2 && p[1] === '*') {
        // no match:  aa , c*       ||      match:       aaa , a*
        return (isMatch(s, p.substring(2)) || (first_match && isMatch(s.substring(1), p)));
    } else {
        return first_match && isMatch(s.substring(1), p.substring(1));
    }
};