Downgrade to a Palindrome

Question

Given a string s, return the smallest contiguous substring you can remove to create a palindrome.

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Examples:

800233008   -> 2
racecarFOOL -> FOOL
abcdedcba   -> (empty string)
ngryL Myrgn -> "L " (or " M")
123456789   -> 12345678 (or 23456789)
aabcdbaa    -> c (or d)
[[]]        -> [[ (or ]])
a           -> (empty string)

Test case suggestions from users (if you find an edge case not listed, please post a comment):

aabaab      -> b    | Suggested by Zgarb, some returned "aa".

---

Rules

• Only printable ASCII characters will appear in the input (no newlines, keep it simple).
• Not really a rule, but note <>, /\, (), [] and {} are not palindromes.

This is code-golf, smallest byte-count wins.

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+100 bounty has been claimed by Adnan

Answer 1

Jelly, 16 bytes

Ḣ;Ṫµ=Ṛ
0,0jŒṖÇÞṪ

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How it works

0,0jŒṖÇÞṪ  Main link. Argument: s (string)

0,0j       Join [0, 0], separating by s. This prepends and appends a 0 to s.
    ŒṖ     Build all partitions of the resulting array.
      ÇÞ   Sort the partitions by the helper link.
           As a side effect, this will remove the first and last element of each
           partition. The 0's make sure that not removing any characters from s
           will still remove [0] from both sides.
        Ṫ  Tail; extract the last one.


Ḣ;Ṫµ=Ṛ     Helper link. Argument: A (array/partition)

Ḣ          Head; yield and remove the first chunk of A.
  Ṫ        Tail; yield and remove the last chunk of A.
 ;         Concatenate head and tail.
   µ=Ṛ     Compare the result, character by character, with its reverse.
           A palindrome of length l will yield an array of l 1's, while a
           non-palindrome of length l will yield an array with at least one 0 among
           the first l/2 Booleans. The lexicographically largest result is the one
           with the longest prefix of 1's, which corresponds to the longest
           palindrome among the outfixes.

Answer 2

J, 24 bytes

(0{::(-:|.)\.#&,<\)~i.@#

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Explanation

(0{::(-:|.)\.#&,<\)~i.@#  Input: array of chars S
                       #  Length of S
                    i.@   Range, [0, 1, ..., len(S)-1]
(                 )~      Dyadic verb on range and S
           \.               For each outfix of S of size x in range
        |.                    Reverse
      -:                      Matches input (is palindrome)
                <\          Box each infix of S of size x in range
             #&,            Flatten each and copy the ones that match
 0{::                       Fetch the result and index 0 and return

Answer 3

Wolfram Language (Mathematica), 53 51 bytes

Byte count assumes CP-1252 encoding.

±{a___,Shortest@b___,c___}/;PalindromeQ[a<>c]:={b}

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Defines a unary operator ± (or a function PlusMinus). Input and output are lists of characters. The test suite does the conversion from and to actual strings for convenience.

Answer 4

05AB1E, 18 bytes

ā<Œ¯¸«ʒRõsǝÂQ}éнèJ

Uses the 05AB1E encoding. Try it online!

Answer 5

Jelly, 20 bytes

ŒḂ⁹Ƥ
çЀJN$Ẏi1ịẆẋ⁻Ṛ$

Try it online!

Answer 6

Python 3, 97 bytes

f=lambda s,p='	':min([s][:p[::-1]in p+p]+(s and[f(s[1:],p+s[0]),f(s[:-1],s[-1]+p)]or[p]),key=len)

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Answer 7

Python 2, 116 bytes

def f(i):R=range(len(i)+1);print min([i[y:k+1]for y in R for k in R if(i[:y]+i[k+1:])[::-1]==i[:y]+i[k+1:]],key=len)

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Saved a couple of bytes with help from Halvard Hummel!

Answer 8

Japt, 26 22 bytes

¬£¬ËUjEY ꬩUtEY
c æ+0

Test it online! Trying to figure out how to map false to something falsy and any string to something truthy in one byte. Currently I'm using +0...

Answer 9

Bash, 108 bytes

for((j=0;;j++)){
for((i=0;i<${#1};i++)){
r=${1:0:i}${1:j+i}
[[ $r = `rev<<<$r` ]]&&echo "${1:i:j}"&&exit
}
}

Takes input as command-line argument.

Try it online! with quotes printed around the output for viewing leading/trailing spaces.

Answer 10

Prolog, 271 byte

p([_]).
p([X,X]).
p([X|Y]):-append([P,[X]],Y),p(P).

s(P,M,S,R,N):-p(P),append([M,S],N).
s(P,M,S,S,N):-p(S),append([P,M],N).
s(P,M,S,P,M):-append([P,S],X),p(X).

d(Y,P,N):-
    findall([A,B,C],(append([R,M,X],Y),s(R,M,X,B,C),length(B,A)),S),
    sort(1,@>,S,[[_,P,N]|_]).

At some point I realized this is going to be huge by code-golf standards, so I kept a few extra blank spaces to preserve the resemblance to the non-obfuscated version. But I still think it might be interesting since it's a different approach to the problem.

The non-obfuscated version:

palindrome([_]).
palindrome([X, X]).
palindrome([X | Xs]) :-
    append([Prefix, [X]], Xs),
    palindrome(Prefix).

palindrome_split(Prefix, Mid, Suffix, Prefix, N) :-
    palindrome(Prefix),
    append([Mid, Suffix], N).
palindrome_split(Prefix, Mid, Suffix, Suffix, N) :-
    palindrome(Suffix),
    append([Prefix, Mid], N).
palindrome_split(Prefix, Mid, Suffix, P, Mid) :-
    append([Prefix, Suffix], P),
    palindrome(P).

palindrome_downgrade(NP, P, N):-
    findall(
        [La, Pa, Na],
        (append([Prefix, Mid, Suffix], NP),
         palindrome_split(Prefix, Mid, Suffix, Pa, Na),
         length(Pa, La)),
        Palindromes),
    sort(1, @>, Palindromes, [[_, P, N] | _]).

Answer 11

C++, 254 248 246 bytes

-6 bytes thanks to Zacharý -2 bytes thanks to Toby Speight

#include<string>
#define S size()
#define T return
using s=std::string;int p(s t){for(int i=0;i<t.S;++i)if(t[i]!=t[t.S-i-1])T 0;T 1;}s d(s e){if(!p(e))for(int i,w=1;w<e.S;++w)for(i=0;i<=e.S-w;++i){s t=e;t.erase(i,w);if(p(t))T e.substr(i,w);}T"";}

So...

• I used T as a macro definition because doing R"" as another effect on string literal ( it's a prefix used to define raw string literals, see cppreference for more informations ) that is not there when i do T""
• Preprocessor definitions can't be on the same line, and have to have at least one space between the name and the content in the definition
• 2 functions : p(std::string) to test if the string is a palindrome. If it is, it returns 1 which casts to true, else it returns 0, which casts to false
• The algorithm loops over the whole string testing if it's a palindrome when erasing each time 1 element, then test erasing 2 elements ( loops over that to the maximum size of the string ), from the first index to the last index - number of erased char. If it finds erasing some part is a palindrome, then, it returns. For example, when passing the string "aabcdbaa" as parameter, both c and d are valid answer, but this code will return c because erasing it and testing if it's a palindrome comes before testing if erasing d and testing if it's palindrome

• Here is the code to test :

  std::initializer_list<std::pair<std::string, std::string>> test{
      {"800233008","2"},
      { "racecarFOOL","FOOL" },
      { "abcdedcba","" },
      { "ngryL Myrgn","L " },
      { "123456789","12345678" },
      { "aabcdbaa","c" },
      { "[[]]","[[" },
      { "a","" },
      { "aabaab","b" }
  };
  
  for (const auto& a : test) {
      if (a.second != d(a.first)) {
          std::cout << "Error on : " << a.first << " - Answer : " << a.second  << " - Current : " << d(a.first) << '\n';
      }
  }
  

Answer 12

Jelly, 33 bytes

r/ḟ@J}ị
“”µJp`ç³$ŒḂ$Ðfạ/ÞḢr/ịµŒḂ?

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Answer 13

PHP 104+1 bytes

while(~($s=$argn)[$e+$i++]?:++$e|$i=0)strrev($t=substr_replace($s,"",$i,$e))==$t&&die(substr($s,$i,$e));

Run as pipe with -nR or try it online.

Answer 14

Haskell, 109 105 bytes

snd.minimum.([]#)
p#s@(a:b)=[(i,take i s)|i<-[0..length s],(==)<*>reverse$p++drop i s]++(p++[a])#b
p#_=[]

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EDIT: Thanks @H.PWiz for taking off 4 bytes! I need to get better with those monads!

Answer 15

JavaScript, 90 bytes

a=>a.map((_,p)=>a.map((_,q)=>k||(t=(b=[...a]).splice(q,p),k=''+b==b.reverse()&&t)),k=0)&&k

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f=
a=>a.map((_,p)=>a.map((_,q)=>k||(t=(b=[...a]).splice(q,p),k=''+b==b.reverse()&&t)),k=0)&&k

F=a=>console.log(a.padEnd(11)+' ---> '+f([...a]).join``)
F('800233008')
F('racecarFOOL')
F('abcdedcba')
F('ngryL Myrgn')
F('123456789')
F('aabcdbaa')
F('[[]]')
F('a')
F('aabaab')

Answer 16

Perl 5, 72 +1 (-p) bytes

$\=$_;/.*(?{$,=$`.$';$\=$&if length$&<length$\&&$,eq reverse$,})(?!)/g}{

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Answer 17

JavaScript (ES6), 91 78 bytes

(s,i=0,j=0,S=[...s],b=S.splice(i,j))=>S+''==S.reverse()?b:f(s,s[++i]?i:!++j,j)

Input and output are lists of characters.

Recursively removes a larger and larger slice from the input until a palindrome is found.

Snippet:

f=
(s,i=0,j=0,S=[...s],b=S.splice(i,j))=>S+''==S.reverse()?b:f(s,s[++i]?i:!++j,j)


console.log(f([...'800233008']).join``)   // 2
console.log(f([...'racecarFOOL']).join``) // FOOL
console.log(f([...'abcdedcba']).join``)   // (empty string)
console.log(f([...'ngryL Myrgn']).join``) // "L " (or " M")
console.log(f([...'123456789']).join``)   // 12345678 (or 23456789)
console.log(f([...'aabcdbaa']).join``)    // c (or d)
console.log(f([...'[[]]']).join``)        // [[ (or ]])
console.log(f([...'a']).join``)           // (empty string)

Answer 18

TSQL (2016) 349B

Not the most compact but straightforward solution:

DECLARE @i VARCHAR(255)='racecarFOOL'
;WITH DAT(v,i,l)AS(SELECT value,(ROW_NUMBER()OVER(ORDER BY value))-1,LEN(@i)FROM STRING_SPLIT(REPLICATE(@i+';',LEN(@i)+1),';')WHERE value<>'')
SELECT TOP 1C,S
FROM(SELECT LEFT(D.v, D.i)+SUBSTRING(D.v,D.i+E.i+1,D.l)C,SUBSTRING(D.v,D.i+1,E.i)S
FROM DAT D CROSS APPLY DAT E)C
WHERE C=REVERSE(C)
ORDER BY LEN(C)DESC

Answer 19

Husk, 18 bytes

◄LfmS=↔†!⁰ṠM-Qŀ⁰Q⁰

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Explanation

◄LfmS=↔†!⁰ṠM-Qŀ⁰Q⁰  Input is a string, say s="aab"
              ŀ⁰    Indices of s: x=[1,2,3]
             Q      Slices: [[],[1],[1,2],[2],[1,2,3],[2,3],[3]]
          ṠM-       Remove each from x: [[1,2,3],[2,3],[3],[1,3],[],[1],[1,2]]
       †!⁰          Index into s: ["aab","ab","b","ab","","a","aa"]
   mS=↔             Check which are palindromes: [0,0,1,0,1,1,1]
  f             Q⁰  Filter the slices of s by this list: ["aa","aab","ab","b"]
◄L                  Minimum on length: "b"

Answer 20

Haskell, 98 94 81 80 bytes

""#0
(h#n)t|(==)=<<reverse$h++drop n t=take n t|x:r<-t=(h++[x])#n$r|m<-n+1=t#m$h

Try it online! Example usage: ""#0 $ "aabaab" yields "b".

Edit: -1 byte thanks to Ørjan Johansen.

Answer 21

C++, 189 186 176 167 bytes

I started with HatsuPointerKun's answer, changing the test to simply compare equality with reversed string; then I changed how we enumerate the candidate strings. Following this, the macros were only used once or twice each, and it was shorter to inline them.

#include<string>
using s=std::string;s d(s e){for(int i,w=0;;++w){s t=e.substr(w);for(i=-1;++i<=t.size();t[i]=e[i])if(t==s{t.rbegin(),t.rend()})return e.substr(i,w);}}

Explanation

Equivalent readable code:

std::string downgrade(std::string e)
{
    for (int w=0; ; ++w) {
        std::string t = e.substr(w);
        for (int i=0;  i<=t.size();  ++i) {
            if (t == std::string{t.rbegin(),t.rend()})
                // We made a palindrome by removing w chars beginning at i
                return e.substr(i,w);
            t[i] = e[i];  // next candidate
        }
    }
}

The enumeration of candidates begins by initialising a string with the first w characters omitted, and then copying successive characters from the original to move the gap. For example, with the string foobar and w==2:

foobar
  ↓↓↓↓
  obar

foobar
↓
fbar

foobar
 ↓
foar

foobar
  ↓
foor

foobar
   ↓
foob

The first pass (with w==0) is a no-op, so the full string will be considered over and over again. That's fine - golfing trumps efficiency! The last iteration of this loop will access the one-past-the-end index; I seem to get away with that with GCC, but strictly, that's Undefined Behaviour.

Test program

A direct lift from HatsuPointerKun's answer:

static const std::initializer_list<std::pair<std::string, std::string>> test{
    { "800233008", "2" },
    { "racecarFOOL", "FOOL" },
    { "abcdedcba", "" },
    { "ngryL Myrgn", "L " },
    { "123456789", "12345678" },
    { "aabcdbaa", "c" },
    { "[[]]", "[[" },
    { "a","" },
    { "aabaab", "b" }
};

#include <iostream>
int main()
{
    for (const auto& a : test) {
        if (a.second != d(a.first)) {
            std::cout << "Error on: " << a.first
                      << " - Expected: " << a.second
                      << " - Actual: " << d(a.first) << '\n';
        }
    }
}

Answer 22

REXX, 132 bytes

a=arg(1)
l=length(a)
do i=1 to l
  do j=0 to l-i+1
    b=delstr(a,i,j)
    if b=reverse(b) & m>j then do
      m=j
      s=substr(a,i,j)
      end
    end
  end
say s

Answer 23

Ruby, 86 84 bytes

->s{l=i=0
(l+=(i+=1)/z=s.size-l+1
i%=z)while(w=s[0,i]+s[i+l..-1])!=w.reverse
s[i,l]}

Try it online!

• Saved 2 bytes thanks to Cyoce

Answer 24

C (gcc), 307 bytes

#define T malloc(K)
P(S,i,y,z,k,u,L,K,V)char*S;{char*M,*R,*E;K=strlen(S);M=T;R=T;E=T;for(i=0;i<K;++i){for(y=0;y<=K-i;++y){strcpy(M,S);for(z=y;z<y+i;E[z-y]=M[z],++z);for(k=y;k+i<=K;M[k]=M[k+i],++k);V=strlen(M);strcpy(R,M);for(u=0;u<V/2;L=R[u],R[u]=R[V-u-1],R[V-u-1]=L,++u);if(!strcmp(M,R))puts(E),exit(0);}}}

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