Valid Palindrome - Leet Code Solution

September 11, 2020

Problem Statement

Given a string, determine if it is a palindrome, considering only alphanumeric characters and ignoring cases.

Note: For the purpose of this problem, we define empty string as valid palindrome.

Example 

Input: "A man, a plan, a canal: Panama"
Output: true

Input: "race a car"
Output: false

Solution

Please note the special conditions:

  1. Ignore case
  2. Ignore any non-alphanumeric character

Lets run our simple two pointer system where:

  • One pointer will start from left, while other start from extreme right end.
  • Lets move left and right pointers untill they are pointing to a non-alphanumeric character
  • Compare characters at both left and right position, check must be case-insensitive

Code

public static boolean isAlphanumeric(char c) {
   return Character.isDigit(c) || Character.isLetter(c);
}
public boolean isPalindrome(String s) {
   if (s.length() == 0) return true;
   
   int l = 0;
   int r = s.length()-1;
   
   while (l < r) {
      while (!isAlphanumeric(s.charAt(l)) && l < r) {
         l++;
      }
      while (!isAlphanumeric(s.charAt(r)) && l < r) {
         r--;
      }
   
      if (Character.toLowerCase(s.charAt(l)) != Character.toLowerCase(s.charAt(r))) {
         return false;
      }
   
      l++;
      r--;
   }
   
   return true;
}

Complexity

Its O(n)

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