LongestPalindrome | Topcoder Archive

Problem Statement

A palindrome is a string that reads the same forwards and backwards. For instance, ABBA is a palindrom, but ABCBB is not. You are given a String s. Return the length of the longest substring of s that is a palindrome.

Definition

Class:: LongestPalindrome
Method:: longestLength
Parameters:: String
Returns:: int
Method signature:: int longestLength(String s)
(be sure your method is public)

Notes

A substring is a set of contiguous characters that form part of the string. For example, BCD is a substring of ABCDE, but BD is not, since B and D are not contiguous in ABCDE.

Constraints

s will contain between 1 and 50 characters, inclusive.
Each character of s will be between 'A' and 'Z', inclusive.

Examples

```
"ABAA"
```
```
Returns: 3
```
"ABA" is a palindrome.
```
"ABB"
```
```
Returns: 2
```
The best we can do is "BB".
```
"ABCBCA"
```
```
Returns: 3
```
"BCB" or "CBC" works, either is the same length.

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