Edit Distance Problem
Description
LeetCode Problem 72.
Given two strings word1 and word2, return the minimum number of operations required to convert word1 to word2.
You have the following three operations permitted on a word:
- Insert a character
- Delete a character
- Replace a character
Example 1:
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Input: word1 = "horse", word2 = "ros"
Output: 3
Explanation:
horse -> rorse (replace 'h' with 'r')
rorse -> rose (remove 'r')
rose -> ros (remove 'e')
Example 2:
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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')
Constraints:
- 0 <= word1.length, word2.length <= 500
- word1 and word2 consist of lowercase English letters.
Sample C++ Code
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int minDistance(string word1, string word2) {
/* Use f[i][j] to represent the shortest edit distance between word1[0,i) and word2[0, j).
Then compare the last character of word1[0,i) and word2[0,j),
which are c and d respectively (c == word1[i-1], d == word2[j-1]):
if c == d, then : f[i][j] = f[i-1][j-1]
otherwise we can use three operations to convert word1 to word2:
(a) if we replaced c with d: f[i][j] = f[i-1][j-1] + 1;
(b) if we added d after c: f[i][j] = f[i][j-1] + 1;
(c) if we deleted c: f[i][j] = f[i-1][j] + 1;
Note that f[i][j] only depends on f[i-1][j-1], f[i-1][j] and f[i][j-1],
therefore we can reduce the space to O(n) by using only the (i-1)th array and previous
updated element(f[i][j-1]). */
int l1 = word1.size();
int l2 = word2.size();
vector<int> f(l2+1, 0);
for (int j = 1; j <= l2; ++j)
f[j] = j;
for (int i = 1; i <= l1; ++i)
{
int prev = i;
for (int j = 1; j <= l2; ++j)
{
int cur;
if (word1[i-1] == word2[j-1]) {
cur = f[j-1];
} else {
cur = min(min(f[j-1], prev), f[j]) + 1;
}
f[j-1] = prev;
prev = cur;
}
f[l2] = prev;
}
return f[l2];
}