I am trying to write a function to control if the parenthesis included in a string
are balanced or not.
I have written the following function:
public bool IsBalanced(string input)
{
//last condition, gets out
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(input)) return true;
int numOpen = 0;
bool opened = false;
foreach (char c in input)
{
if (char.ToUpperInvariant(c) =='(')
{
opened = true;
numOpen+=1;
}
if (char.ToUpperInvariant(c) == ')')
{
if (opened)
{
numOpen-=1;
opened = numOpen > 0;
}
else
return false; //incorrect position parentheses, closes but not opened
}
}
return numOpen == 0;
}
I wanted to change it to a recursive function, but have not been able to do so. Could anyone give a hint how to do it?
The basic idea is to take a variant (numOpen in this case) as an argument. Here is my code:
public bool IsBalancedRec(string input, int numOpen = 0)
{
if (numOpen < 0)
return false;
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(input))
return numOpen == 0;
char c = input[0];
string rest = input.Substring(1);
if (c == '(')
return IsBalancedRec(rest, numOpen + 1);
else if (c == ')')
return IsBalancedRec(rest, numOpen - 1);
else
return IsBalancedRec(rest, numOpen);
}
And call this like IsBalancedRec("so(m(eth)ing)")
.