Longest Palindrome Substring - Leet Code Solution

August 27, 2019

Problem Statement

Given a string s, find the longest palindromic substring in s. You may assume that the maximum length of s is 1000.

Example 1:

Input: "babad"
Output: "bab"
Note: "aba" is also a valid answer.

Example 2:

Input: "cbbd"
Output: "bb"

Brute Force Solution

  • Find all substrings of a string
  • Check if that substring is a palindrome string
  • Keep a track of longest palindrome string found so far

Simple!

Code

public class Q5_LongestPalindromeSubstring_Simple {
	private String str;
	
	public Q5_LongestPalindromeSubstring_Simple(String str) {
		this.str = str;
	}
	
	private boolean isPalindrome(String s) {
		int lastIndex = s.length()-1;
		int startIndex = 0;
		while (startIndex < s.length() && lastIndex >= 0) {
			if (s.charAt(startIndex) != s.charAt(lastIndex)) {
				return false;
			}
			startIndex ++;
			lastIndex --;
		}
		return true;
	}
	
	public String longestPalindrome() {
		String max = "";
		
		//generate all substrings
		for (int i=0; i<this.str.length(); i++) {
			for (int j=i+1; j<this.str.length(); j++) {
				String substring = this.str.substring(i, j);
				if (this.isPalindrome(substring)) {
					if (max.length() < substring.length()) {
						max = substring;
					}
				}
			}
		}
		
		return max;
	}
}

Runtime Complexity

It is O(n^3)

  • O(n^2) in find all substrings
  • For every substring, find out if it is a palindrome - O(n)

Optimized Solution

For optimized solutions, we should go deeper into the requirements. What is palindrome. It can be found in two ways:

  • Centered around a single character. Length will be odd. Example: abc
  • Centered around two characters. Length will be even. Example: abba

The solution is around starting from the one element, and try to expand it from both sides. Expand it till you find same character.

Algorithm

  • Iterate over string
  • Try to expand it in two ways. Around single character and around two characters
  • Keep track of max found palindrome substring

Code

public class Q5_LongestPalindromeSubstring_Optimized {
	private String str;
	
	public Q5_LongestPalindromeSubstring_Optimized(String str) {
		this.str = str;
	}
	
    //expanding around elements passed
	private String findPalindrome(int startIndex, int endIndex) {
		String palindrome = "";
		while (startIndex >= 0 && endIndex < this.str.length() && this.str.charAt(startIndex) == this.str.charAt(endIndex)) {
			palindrome = this.str.substring(startIndex, endIndex+1);
			startIndex --;
			endIndex ++;
		}
		
		return palindrome;
	}
	
	public String longestPalindrome() {
		String max = "";

		for (int i=0; i<this.str.length()-1; i++) {
			String s1 = this.findPalindrome(i, i);
			String s2 = this.findPalindrome(i,  i+1);
			
			String maxOfTwo = s1.length() > s2.length() ? s1 : s2;
			if (max.length() < maxOfTwo.length()) {
				max = maxOfTwo;
			}
		}
		
		return max;
	}
}

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