word-ladder

word-ladder

题目描述

Given two words (start and end), and a dictionary, find the length of shortest transformation sequence from start to end, such that:

1. Only one letter can be changed at a time
2. Each intermediate word must exist in the dictionary

For example,

Given:
start =”hit”
end =”cog”
dict =[“hot”,”dot”,”dog”,”lot”,”log”]

As one shortest transformation is”hit” -> “hot” -> “dot” -> “dog” -> “cog”,

As one shortest transformation is”hit” -> “hot” -> “dot” -> “dog” -> “cog”,
return its length5.

Note:

• Return 0 if there is no such transformation sequence.
• All words have the same length.
• All words contain only lowercase alphabetic characters.

思想

求路径长度，直接用BFS来做

代码

class Solution {
public:
    int ladderLength(string start, string end, unordered_set<string> &dict) {
        if(start.size()== 0 || end.size() == 0) return 0;

        queue<string> Q;
        Q.push(start); dict.erase(start);

        string temp;
        char chTemp;
        int count = 1;
        int level = 1;

        while(!Q.empty()) {
            temp = Q.front();
            Q.pop(); count--;

            for(int i = 0; i <　temp.size(); i++) {

                chTemp = temp[i];

                for(char j = 'a'; j <= 'z'; j++) {
                    if(temp[i] == j) continue;
                    temp[i] = j;

                    if(temp == end) return level+1;

                    if(dict.count(temp) > 0) {
                        Q.push(temp);
                        dict.erase(temp);
                    }
                }
                temp[i] = chTemp;
            }

            if(count == 0) {
                count = Q.size();
                level++;
            }

        }
        return 0;
    }
};