282. Expression Add Operators

Hard
Math
String
Backtracking

Description

Given a string num that contains only digits and an integer target, return all possibilities to insert the binary operators '+', '-', and/or '*' between the digits of num so that the resultant expression evaluates to the target value.

Note that operands in the returned expressions should not contain leading zeros.

Note that a number can contain multiple digits.

 

Example 1:

Input: num = "123", target = 6
Output: ["1*2*3","1+2+3"]
Explanation: Both "1*2*3" and "1+2+3" evaluate to 6.

Example 2:

Input: num = "232", target = 8
Output: ["2*3+2","2+3*2"]
Explanation: Both "2*3+2" and "2+3*2" evaluate to 8.

Example 3:

Input: num = "3456237490", target = 9191
Output: []
Explanation: There are no expressions that can be created from "3456237490" to evaluate to 9191.

 

Constraints:

  • 1 <= num.length <= 10
  • num consists of only digits.
  • -231 <= target <= 231 - 1

Hints

Hint 1
Note that a number can contain multiple digits.
Hint 2
Since the question asks us to find <b>all</b> of the valid expressions, we need a way to iterate over all of them. (<b>Hint:</b> Recursion!)
Hint 3
We can keep track of the expression string and evaluate it at the very end. But that would take a lot of time. Can we keep track of the expression's value as well so as to avoid the evaluation at the very end of recursion?
Hint 4
Think carefully about the multiply operator. It has a higher precedence than the addition and subtraction operators. <br> 1 + 2 = 3 <br> 1 + 2 - 4 --> 3 - 4 --> -1 <br> 1 + 2 - 4 * 12 --> -1 * 12 --> -12 (WRONG!) <br> 1 + 2 - 4 * 12 --> -1 - (-4) + (-4 * 12) --> 3 + (-48) --> -45 (CORRECT!)
Hint 5
We simply need to keep track of the last operand in our expression and reverse it's effect on the expression's value while considering the multiply operator.

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