Valid Palindrome
Problem
A phrase is a palindrome if, after converting all uppercase letters into lowercase letters and removing all non-alphanumeric characters, it reads the same forward and backward. Alphanumeric characters include letters and numbers.
Given a string s, return true if it is a palindrome, or false otherwise.
Example 1:
Input: s = "A man, a plan, a canal: Panama"
Output: true
Explanation: "amanaplanacanalpanama" is a palindrome.
Example 2:
Input: s = "race a car"
Output: false
Explanation: "raceacar" is not a palindrome.
Example 3:
Input: s = " "
Output: true
Explanation: s is an empty string "" after removing non-alphanumeric characters.
Since an empty string reads the same forward and backward, it is a palindrome.
Constraints:
1 <= s.length <= 2 * 105sconsists only of printable ASCII characters.
Solution
- Two Pointers
- Time: O(n)
- Space: O(1)
class Solution(object):
def isPalindrome(self, s):
"""
:type s: str
:rtype: bool
"""
l, r = 0, len(s) - 1
while l < r:
while l < r and not self.alphaNum(s[l]):
l += 1
while l < r and not self.alphaNum(s[r]):
r -= 1
if s[l].lower() != s[r].lower():
return False
l, r = l + 1, r - 1
return True
def alphaNum(self, c):
return (ord('A') <= ord(c) <= ord('Z') or
ord('a') <= ord(c) <= ord('z') or
ord('0') <= ord(c) <= ord('9'))