Checking balanced brackets using stacks

Hi, today's problem is a relatively common one in technical interviews, here it is from Daily Coding Problem:

This problem was asked by Facebook.
Given a string of round, curly, and square open and closing brackets, return whether the brackets are balanced (well-formed).
For example, given the string "([])[]({})", you should return true.
Given the string "([)]" or "((()", you should return false.

Here is the approach:
- First have a hash table which you can use to (quickly) map an open bracket to a closed bracket. You can also use it as an open bracket checker
- Then use a standard stack. Push open brackets. Pop closed ones, check for matches.
- Stack should be empty at the end

That's it, code is on Github https://github.com/marcelodebarros/dailycodingproblem/blob/master/DailyCodingProblem10112018.cs and below, thanks, Marcelo
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using System.Collections;
namespace DailyCodingProblem
{
 class DailyCodingProblem10112018
 {
 public bool BracketsBalanced(string str)
 {
 if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(str)) return true;
 string b = "(){}[]";
 Hashtable brackets = new Hashtable();
 for (int i = 0; i < b.Length; i += 2) brackets.Add(b[i], b[i + 1]); Stack stack = new Stack();
 for (int i = 0; i < str.Length; i++) { if (brackets.ContainsKey(str[i])) stack.Push(str[i]); else { if (stack.Count == 0) return false; char c = stack.Pop(); if (!brackets.ContainsKey(c) || (char)brackets[c] != str[i]) return false; } } return stack.Count() == 0; } } } 

Comments

  1. Very nice! This problem is also available on leetcode - https://leetcode.com/problems/valid-parentheses. Smart compilers are actually able to generate more efficient lookup tables for switches and in some languages the implementation is fairly concise. For example my Rust implementation defines a match_of lookup function that is based on pattern matching (fancy switch):

    impl Solution {
    pub fn is_valid(s: String) -> bool {
    let mut stack = Vec::new();
    let match_of = |c: char| -> char {
    match c {
    ')' => '(',
    '}' => '{',
    ']' => '[',
    _ => panic!("Invalid closing bracket"),
    }
    };
    for ch in s.chars() {
    match ch {
    '(' | '{' | '[' => stack.push(ch),
    closing => {
    if let Some(closing_bracket) = stack.pop() {
    if closing_bracket != match_of(closing) {
    return false;
    }
    } else {
    return false;
    }
    }
    }
    }
    stack.is_empty()
    }
    }

    https://gist.github.com/ttsugriy/3dc568c9e55b90233849090707f065b3

    Cheers,
    Taras

    Reply Delete

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