Baozi Leetcode solution 72. Edit Distance
Problem Statement
Given two words word1 and word2, find the minimum number of operations required to convert word1 to word2.
You have the following 3 operations permitted on a word:
- Insert a character
- Delete a character
- Replace a character
Example 1:
Input: word1 = "horse", word2 = "ros"
Output: 3
Explanation:
horse -> rorse (replace 'h' with 'r')
rorse -> rose (remove 'r')
rose -> ros (remove 'e')
Example 2:
Input: word1 = "intention", word2 = "execution"
Output: 5
Explanation:
intention -> inention (remove 't')
inention -> enention (replace 'i' with 'e')
enention -> exention (replace 'n' with 'x')
exention -> exection (replace 'n' with 'c')
exection -> execution (insert 'u')
Problem link
Video Tutorial
You can find the detailed video tutorial here
Thought Process
Brute force sounds like really overkill because we have to list all the possible ways and it is exponential time complexity. On a high level, the recursion looks like
- if cannot convert A to B, return -1 (the recursion termination function); if A == B, then return 0
- try 3 different ways, insert, remove and replace, cut that character and continue the recursion. Compare the minimum of that 3 methods (exclude -1)
Edit distance is a classic Dynamic Programming (DP) problem, just like Coin Change Problem. It follows the DP template perfectly (asking for extreme values)
The mathematical induction function is
DP[i][j] is the minimum operations needed to convert String[0-i] to String[0-j]
Initial values: dp[0][j] = j and dp[i][0] = i
If (A[i] == B[j]) dp[i][j] = dp[i-1][j-1]
Else min(dp[i][j-1], dp[i-1][j], dp[i-1][j-1]) +1;
Solutions
DP
1 public int minDistance(String word1, String word2) { 2 if (word1 == null || word2 == null) return -1; 3 4 int l1 = word1.length(); 5 int l2 = word2.length(); 6 7 if (l1 == 0 || l2 == 0) { 8 return l1 == 0 ? l2 : l1; 9 } 10 11 // A pattern for coding up DP, use extra array 12 // This could be further optimized into 2 arrays 13 int[][] lookup = new int[l1 + 1][l2 + 1]; 14 15 // Note the initialization case here, for an empty string, it will take i to change with the current one 16 // initialize 17 for (int i = 0; i <= l2; i++) { 18 lookup[0][i] = i; 19 } 20 21 for (int i = 0; i <= l1;i++) { 22 lookup[i][0] = i; 23 } 24 25 /* mathematical induction function: 26 * dp[i][j] = dp[i-1][j-1] if (A[i] == B[j]) 27 or = min(dp[i][j-1], dp[i-1][j], dp[i-1][j-1]) +1; 28 dp[0][j] = j and dp[i][0] = i */ 29 // this is O(M*N) time and M*N space, space could be saved using 2 arrays 30 for (int i = 1; i <= l1; i++) { 31 for (int j = 1; j <= l2; j++) { 32 if (word1.charAt(i-1) == word2.charAt(j-1)) { 33 lookup[i][j] = lookup[i-1][j-1]; 34 } else { 35 lookup[i][j] = Math.min(lookup[i-1][j], Math.min(lookup[i][j-1], lookup[i-1][j-1])) + 1; 36 } 37 } 38 } 39 40 return lookup[l1][l2]; 41 }
Time Complexity: O(M*N) where M is word1 length and N is word2 length
Space Complexity: O(M*N) since we need an extra 2D array
References