Regular Expression Matching

Given an input string (s) and a pattern (p), implement regular expression matching with support for '.' and '*' where: 

• '.' Matches any single character.​​​​
• '*' Matches zero or more of the preceding element.

The matching should cover the entire input string (not partial).

 

Example 1:

Input: s = "aa", p = "a"
Output: false
Explanation: "a" does not match the entire string "aa".

Example 2:

Input: s = "aa", p = "a*"
Output: true
Explanation: '*' means zero or more of the preceding element, 'a'. Therefore, by repeating 'a' once, it becomes "aa".

Example 3:

Input: s = "ab", p = ".*"
Output: true
Explanation: ".*" means "zero or more (*) of any character (.)".

Example 4:

Input: s = "aab", p = "c*a*b"
Output: true
Explanation: c can be repeated 0 times, a can be repeated 1 time. Therefore, it matches "aab".

Example 5:

Input: s = "mississippi", p = "mis*is*p*."
Output: false

Solution :

public boolean isMatch(String text, String pattern) {
        if (pattern.isEmpty()) return text.isEmpty();
        boolean first_match = (!text.isEmpty() &&
                               (pattern.charAt(0) == text.charAt(0) || pattern.charAt(0) == '.'));

        if (pattern.length() >= 2 && pattern.charAt(1) == '*'){
            return (isMatch(text, pattern.substring(2)) ||
                    (first_match && isMatch(text.substring(1), pattern)));
        } else {
            return first_match && isMatch(text.substring(1), pattern.substring(1));
        }
    }