Recursive solution to common longest substring between two strings - algorithm

Question

I am trying to return the length of a common substring between two strings. I'm very well aware of the DP solution, however I want to be able to solve this recursively just for practice.
I have the solution to find the longest common subsequence...
def get_substring(str1, str2, i, j):
if i == 0 or j == 0:
return
elif str1[i-1] == str2[j-1]:
return 1 + get_substring(str1, str2, i-1, j-1)
else:
return max(get_substring(str1, str2, i, j-1), get_substring(str1, str2, j-1, i))
However, I need the longest common substring, not the longest common sequence of letters. I tried altering my code in a couple of ways, one being changing the base case to...
if i == 0 or j == 0 or str1[i-1] != str2[j-1]:
return 0
But that did not work, and neither did any of my other attempts.
For example, for the following strings...
X = "AGGTAB"
Y = "BAGGTXAYB"
print(get_substring(X, Y, len(X), len(Y)))
The longest substring is AGGT.
My recursive skills are not the greatest, so if anybody can help me out that would be very helpful.

Answer 1

package algo.dynamic;
public class LongestCommonSubstring {
public static void main(String[] args) {
String a = "AGGTAB";
String b = "BAGGTXAYB";
int maxLcs = lcs(a.toCharArray(), b.toCharArray(), a.length(), b.length(), 0);
System.out.println(maxLcs);
}
private static int lcs(char[] a, char[] b, int i, int j, int count) {
if (i == 0 || j == 0)
return count;
if (a[i - 1] == b[j - 1]) {
count = lcs(a, b, i - 1, j - 1, count + 1);
}
count = Math.max(count, Math.max(lcs(a, b, i, j - 1, 0), lcs(a, b, i - 1, j, 0)));
return count;
}
}

Answer 2

You need to recurse on each separately. Which is easier to do if you have multiple recursive functions.
def longest_common_substr_at_both_start (str1, str2):
if 0 == len(str1) or 0 == len(str2) or str1[0] != str2[0]:
return ''
else:
return str1[0] + longest_common_substr_at_both_start(str1[1:], str2[1:])
def longest_common_substr_at_first_start (str1, str2):
if 0 == len(str2):
return ''
else:
answer1 = longest_common_substr_at_both_start (str1, str2)
answer2 = longest_common_substr_at_first_start (str1, str2[1:])
return answer2 if len(answer1) < len(answer2) else answer1
def longest_common_substr (str1, str2):
if 0 == len(str1):
return ''
else:
answer1 = longest_common_substr_at_first_start (str1, str2)
answer2 = longest_common_substr(str1[1:], str2)
return answer2 if len(answer1) < len(answer2) else answer1
print(longest_common_substr("BAGGTXAYB","AGGTAB") )

Answer 3

I am so sorry. I didn't have time to convert this into a recursive function. This was relatively straight forward to compose. If Python had a fold function a recursive function would be greatly eased. 90% of recursive functions are primitive. That's why fold is so valuable.
I hope the logic in this can help with a recursive version.
(x,y)= "AGGTAB","BAGGTXAYB"
xrng= range(len(x)) # it is used twice
np=[(a+1,a+2) for a in xrng] # make pairs of list index values to use
allx = [ x[i:i+b] for (a,b) in np for i in xrng[:-a]] # make list of len>1 combinations
[ c for i in range(len(y)) for c in allx if c == y[i:i+len(c)]] # run, matching x & y
...producing this list from which to take the longest of the matches
['AG', 'AGG', 'AGGT', 'GG', 'GGT', 'GT']
I didn't realize getting the longest match from the list would be a little involved.
ls= ['AG', 'AGG', 'AGGT', 'GG', 'GGT', 'GT']
ml= max([len(x) for x in ls])
ls[[a for (a,b) in zip(range(len(ls)),[len(x) for x in ls]) if b == ml][0]]
"AGGT"