KEY POINTS TO COVER

Define the rules of the wildcard characters: '?' matches any single character, while '*' matches any sequence of zero or more characters.
Explain the Dynamic Programming (DP) approach, using a 2D boolean table of size (M+1) x (N+1) to store matching states between the text and the pattern.
Detail the DP transition: if characters match or pattern is '?', inherit from dp[i-1][j-1]; if pattern is '*', check dp[i-1][j] (matching current char) or dp[i][j-1] (ignoring '*').
Emphasize the base case initialization, especially setting dp[0][0] = true and handling leading '*' patterns when the input string is empty.
Discuss complexity trade-offs, noting the $O(M \times N)$ time complexity and how space can be optimized from $O(M \times N)$ to $O(N)$ using a 1D DP array.

HOW TO ANSWER

Structure your response by first stating the recursive relationship, then explaining the 2D DP transition matrix. Walk through a quick dry-run with a simple example like matching "a*b" against "axb".

AVOID

Presenting a brute-force recursive solution without suggesting memoization or dynamic programming to optimize the exponential runtime.
Forgetting edge cases, such as handling empty strings, patterns consisting of only asterisks, or out-of-bounds indices.
Writing code immediately without first explaining your logic and confirming the approach with the interviewer.

Chaldal

Chaldal Interview Questions in Bangladesh

Designations

How do you implement wildcard pattern matching using '?' and '*'?

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