Program to check minimum number of characters needed to make string palindrome in Python

Suppose we have a string s, we have to find the minimum number of characters needed to be inserted so that the string becomes a palindrome.

So, if the input is like s = "mad", then the output will be 2, as we can insert "am" to get "madam".

To solve this, we will follow these steps −

• Define a function dp(). This will take i, j

• if i >= j, then

  • return 0

• if s[i] is same as s[j], then

  • return dp(i + 1, j - 1)

• otherwise,

  • return minimum of dp(i + 1, j) and dp(i, j - 1) + 1

• From the main method, do the following

• return dp(0, size of s - 1)

Let us see the following implementation to get better understanding −

Example

 Live Demo

class Solution:    def solve(self, s):       def dp(i, j):          if i >= j:             return 0          if s[i] == s[j]:             return dp(i + 1, j - 1)          else:             return min(dp(i + 1, j), dp(i, j - 1)) + 1       return dp(0, len(s) - 1) ob = Solution() s = "mad" print(ob.solve(s))

Input

s = "mad"

Output

2