Finding the longest palindromic substring (not subsequence)

Question

I am doing the Leetcode question of Find the Longeest Palindromic Substring .

For example if the input babad then the output can be bab or aba .

OR

if the input is cbbd then the output is bb .

I'm pretty sure I have it figured out, this is my code...

def longestPalindrome(self, s):

    n = len(s)

    # Empty matrix.
    table = [[False for i in range(n)] for j in range(n)]

    # Identity matrix.
    for i in range(n):
        table[i][i] = True

    max_len = 0
    start = 0
    finish = 0

    for sil in range(2, n+1):
        for i in range(n-sil + 1):
            j = sil + i - 1
            if sil == 2:
                if s[i] == s[j]:
                    table[i][j] = True
                    max_len = j-i
                    start = i
                    finish = j
            else:
                if s[i] == s[j] and table[i+1][j-1]:
                    table[i][j] = True

                    if (j - i) > finish-start:
                        max_len = j - i
                        start = i
                        finish = j

    return s[start:finish+1]

It works on most cases except for when the string is extremely long. I am submitting my code and it is failing on the following case...

"esbtzjaaijqkgmtaajpsdfiqtvxsgfvijpxrvxgfumsuprzlyvhclgkhccmcnquukivlpnjlfteljvykbddtrpmxzcrdqinsnlsteonhcegtkoszzonkwjevlasgjlcquzuhdmmkhfniozhuphcfkeobturbuoefhmtgcvhlsezvkpgfebbdbhiuwdcftenihseorykdguoqotqyscwymtjejpdzqepjkadtftzwebxwyuqwyeegwxhroaaymusddwnjkvsvrwwsmolmidoybsotaqufhepinkkxicvzrgbgsarmizugbvtzfxghkhthzpuetufqvigmyhmlsgfaaqmmlblxbqxpluhaawqkdluwfirfngbhdkjjyfsxglsnakskcbsyafqpwmwmoxjwlhjduayqyzmpkmrjhbqyhongfdxmuwaqgjkcpatgbrqdllbzodnrifvhcfvgbixbwywanivsdjnbrgskyifgvksadvgzzzuogzcukskjxbohofdimkmyqypyuexypwnjlrfpbtkqyngvxjcwvngmilgwbpcsseoywetatfjijsbcekaixvqreelnlmdonknmxerjjhvmqiztsgjkijjtcyetuygqgsikxctvpxrqtuhxreidhwcklkkjayvqdzqqapgdqaapefzjfngdvjsiiivnkfimqkkucltgavwlakcfyhnpgmqxgfyjziliyqhugphhjtlllgtlcsibfdktzhcfuallqlonbsgyyvvyarvaxmchtyrtkgekkmhejwvsuumhcfcyncgeqtltfmhtlsfswaqpmwpjwgvksvazhwyrzwhyjjdbphhjcmurdcgtbvpkhbkpirhysrpcrntetacyfvgjivhaxgpqhbjahruuejdmaghoaquhiafjqaionbrjbjksxaezosxqmncejjptcksnoq"

The error message is Time Limit Exceeded.

Why is this? I am doing a Dynamic Programming solution which should be an accepted answer.

Answer 1

You are not breaking out of your inner loop early, so you are still doing O(n²) work in all cases.

Consider that a palindrome must have either 'xx' or 'x?x' at its center. Where x is any character that appears twice, and ? is any character.

This probably doesn't improve worst case running time for some pathalogical cases, but at least in the example you provided it should save you a lot of computation.