Check for balanced parentheses in an expression in C++

Suppose we have an expression. The expression has some parentheses; we have to check the parentheses are balanced or not. The order of the parentheses are (), {} and []. Suppose there are two strings. “()[(){()}]” this is valid, but “{[}]” is invalid.

The task is simple; we will use stack to do this. We should follow these steps to get the solution −

• Traverse through the expression until it has exhausted
  • if the current character is opening bracket like (, { or [, then push into stack
  • if the current character is closing bracket like ), } or ], then pop from stack, and check whether the popped bracket is corresponding starting bracket of the current character, then it is fine, otherwise that is not balanced.
• After the string is exhausted, if there are some starting bracket left into the stack, then the string is not balanced.

Example

 Live Demo

#include <iostream>
#include <stack>
using namespace std;
bool isBalancedExp(string exp) {
   stack<char> stk;
   char x;
   for (int i=0; i<exp.length(); i++) {
      if (exp[i]=='('||exp[i]=='['||exp[i]=='{') {
         stk.push(exp[i]);
         continue;
      }
      if (stk.empty())
         return false;
      switch (exp[i]) {
      case ')':
         x = stk.top();
         stk.pop();
         if (x=='{' || x=='[')
            return false;
         break;
      case '}':
         x = stk.top();
         stk.pop();
         if (x=='(' || x=='[')
            return false;
         break;
      case ']':
         x = stk.top();
         stk.pop();
         if (x =='(' || x == '{')
            return false;
         break;
      }
   }
   return (stk.empty());
}
int main() {
   string expresion = "()[(){()}]";
   if (isBalancedExp(expresion))
      cout << "This is Balanced Expression";
   else
      cout << "This is Not Balanced Expression";
}

Output

This is Balanced Expression