Update appNew update is available. Click here to update.

Edit Distance

Last Updated: 18 Jul, 2020
Difficulty: Moderate

PROBLEM STATEMENT

Try Problem

You are given two strings 'S' and 'T' of lengths 'N' and 'M' respectively. Find the "Edit Distance" between the strings.

Edit Distance of two strings is the minimum number of steps required to make one string equal to the other. In order to do so, you can perform the following three operations:

1. Delete a character
2. Replace a character with another one
3. Insert a character
Note:
Strings don't contain spaces in between.
 Input format:
The first line of input contains the string 'S' of length 'N'.

The second line of the input contains the String 'T' of length 'M'.
Output format:
The only line of output prints the minimum "Edit Distance" between the strings.
Note:
You do not need to print anything; it has already been taken care of. Just implement the given functions.
Constraints:
0 <= N <= 10 ^ 3
0 <= M <= 10 ^ 3

Time Limit : 1sec

Approach 1

  • We will write a recursive approach.
  • The base case would be if the length of the first string is 0 then we need to add all the characters of the second string to the first string hence return the length of the second string. Similarly, if the length of the second string is 0 return length of the first string.
  • Now the recurrence relation is as follows:
    • If the last characters of two strings are not the same, try all operations and it will cost 1. Here i is initially the last index of s1 and j is initially the last index of s2 and f(i, j) is the edit distance of str1(0, i) to str2(0, j). str(i, j) denotes the substring formed by taking the characters at index i through index j.
    • f(i, j) = 1 + min(f(i - 1, j), f(i, j - 1), f(i - 1, j - 1)) 
    • Here the three recursive calls are for the insert, remove and replace respectively and s1, s2 will be parameters of all function calls. If the last characters of two strings are the same (s1[i] == s2[j]) then the relationship would be:
      • f(i, j) = f(i - 1, j - 1)
Try Problem