Given a string s of length n over a general alphabet and an integer k, the problem is to decide whether s is a concatenation of k nonempty palindromes. Two previously known solutions for this problem work in time O(kn) and O(nlog n) respectively. Here we settle the complexity of this problem in the word-RAM model, presenting an O(n)-time online deciding algorithm. The algorithm simultaneously finds the minimum odd number of factors and the minimum even number of factors in a factorization of a string into nonempty palindromes. We also demonstrate how to get an explicit factorization of s into k palindromes with an O(n)-time offline postprocessing
