72. Edit Distance

1. Description

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

2. Example

Example 1

Input: word1 = “horse”, word2 = “ros”
Output: 3
Explanation:
horse -> rorse (replace ‘h’ with ‘r’)
rorse -> rose (remove ‘r’)
rose -> ros (remove ‘e’)

Example 2

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’)

3. Constraints

  • 0 <= word1.length, word2.length <= 500
  • word1 and word2 consist of lowercase English letters.

4. Solutions

Dynamic Programming

m = word1.size(), n = word2.size()
Time complexity: O(mn)
Space complexity: O(min(m, n))

class Solution {
public:
    int minDistance(const string &word1, const string &word2) {
        bool word1_longer = word1.size() > word2.size();
        const string &w1 = word1_longer ? word1 : word2;
        const string &w2 = word1_longer ? word2 : word1;
        const int m = w1.size(), n = w2.size();

        vector<int> distance(n + 1, 0);
        for (int j = 0; j <= n; ++j) {
            distance[j] = j;
        }

        for (int i = 1; i <= m; ++i) {
            int prev = distance[0];
            distance[0] = i;
            for (int j = 1; j <= n; ++j) {
                int backup = distance[j];

                if (w1[i - 1] == w2[j - 1]) {
                    distance[j] = prev;
                } else {
                    distance[j] = min(distance[j], min(distance[j - 1], prev)) + 1;
                }

                prev = backup;
            }
        }

        return distance.back();
    }
};
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