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97. Interleaving String

Difficulty Topics

Description

Given strings s1, s2, and s3, find whether s3 is formed by an interleaving of s1 and s2.

An interleaving of two strings s and t is a configuration where s and t are divided into n and m non-empty substrings respectively, such that:

  • s = s1 + s2 + ... + sn
  • t = t1 + t2 + ... + tm
  • |n - m| <= 1
  • The interleaving is s1 + t1 + s2 + t2 + s3 + t3 + ... or t1 + s1 + t2 + s2 + t3 + s3 + ...

Note: a + b is the concatenation of strings a and b.

 

Example 1:

Input: s1 = "aabcc", s2 = "dbbca", s3 = "aadbbcbcac"
Output: true
Explanation: One way to obtain s3 is:
Split s1 into s1 = "aa" + "bc" + "c", and s2 into s2 = "dbbc" + "a".
Interleaving the two splits, we get "aa" + "dbbc" + "bc" + "a" + "c" = "aadbbcbcac".
Since s3 can be obtained by interleaving s1 and s2, we return true.

Example 2:

Input: s1 = "aabcc", s2 = "dbbca", s3 = "aadbbbaccc"
Output: false
Explanation: Notice how it is impossible to interleave s2 with any other string to obtain s3.

Example 3:

Input: s1 = "", s2 = "", s3 = ""
Output: true

 

Constraints:

  • 0 <= s1.length, s2.length <= 100
  • 0 <= s3.length <= 200
  • s1, s2, and s3 consist of lowercase English letters.

 

Follow up: Could you solve it using only O(s2.length) additional memory space?

Solution

interleaving-string.py
class Solution:
    def isInterleave(self, s1: str, s2: str, s3: str) -> bool:
        n, m, k = len(s1), len(s2), len(s3)

        if n + m != k: return False

        @cache
        def go(a, b):
            if a + b == k: 
                return True

            res = False

            if a < n and s1[a] == s3[a + b]:
                res |= go(a + 1, b)

            if b < m and s2[b] == s3[a + b]:
                res |= go(a, b + 1)

            return res

        return go(0, 0)