Reference no: EM13521

Complete the recursive method match(String x, String y) in the code below which will determine whether or not two strings match.  The matching process should allow "wild cards". A '@' character will match with any other single character and a '*' character will match with 0 or more characters of any type.

public class CompareStrings {

  public static boolean match(String x, String y) {

  ... ;

 }

  public static void main(String args[]) {
  System.out.println(match("hello", "hello."));  // should return false
  System.out.println(match("hello", "jello"));  // should return false
  System.out.println(match("hello", "h@llo"));  // should return true
  System.out.println(match("hello", "h@@@@"));  // should return true
  System.out.println(match("hello", "h*"));  // should return true
  System.out.println(match("hello", "*l*"));  // should return true
  System.out.println(match("anyString", "*"));  // should return true
  System.out.println(match("help", "h@@@@"));  // should return false
  System.out.println(match("help", "h*"));   // should return true
  System.out.println(match("help", "*l*"));  // should return true
  System.out.println(match("help", "*l*p"));  // should return true
  System.out.println(match("help", "h@llo"));  // should return false
  System.out.println(match("", "*"));     // should return true
  System.out.println(match("", "***"));   // should return true
  System.out.println(match("", "@"));     // should return false
 }
}
 
As a hint, try to first get your code working without wild cards. Then get it working with the '@' character and lastly with the '*' character. Remember to break the Strings apart one letter at a time and that the recursive call should take one or two smaller strings as parameters.