AlgoLounge

Regular Expression Matching

hard

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).

Examples

Example 1

Input:  s = "aa", p = "a"
Output: false

"a" does not match the entire string "aa".

Example 2

Input:  s = "aa", p = "a*"
Output: true

'*' 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

".*" means "zero or more (*) of any character (.)".

Constraints

  • 1 <= s.length <= 20
  • 1 <= p.length <= 20
  • 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.
TypeScript
Loading editor…
List of test cases (8)
Case 1
s = "aa"
p = "a"
Case 2
s = "aa"
p = "a*"
Case 3
s = "ab"
p = ".*"
Case 4
s = "aab"
p = "c*a*b"
Case 5
s = "mississippi"
p = "mis*is*p*."
Case 6
s = ""
p = "a*"
Case 7
s = "ab"
p = ".*c"
Case 8
s = "aaa"
p = "a*a"