LeetCode #127 - Word Ladder

题目描述：

Given two words (beginWord and endWord), and a dictionary's word list, find the length of shortest transformation sequence from beginWord to endWord, such that:

1. Only one letter can be changed at a time.
2. Each transformed word must exist in the word list. Note that beginWord is not a transformed word.

Note:

• Return 0 if there is no such transformation sequence.
• All words have the same length.
• All words contain only lowercase alphabetic characters.
• You may assume no duplicates in the word list.
• You may assume beginWord and endWord are non-empty and are not the same.

Example 1:

Input:
beginWord = "hit",
endWord = "cog",
wordList = ["hot","dot","dog","lot","log","cog"]
Output: 5
Explanation: As one shortest transformation is "hit" -> "hot" -> "dot" -> "dog" -> "cog",
return its length 5.

Example 2:

Input:
beginWord = "hit"
endWord = "cog"
wordList = ["hot","dot","dog","lot","log"]
Output: 0
Explanation: The endWord "cog" is not in wordList, therefore no possible transformation.

通过修改字符串中的一个字符，得到wordLsit中的一个词，这样不断变换，求需要多少步变成目标字符串。利用队列存储起点字符串，然后对于字符串的每个字符都进行修改，得到新的字符串，如果它在wordList中就可以加入队列，这样就遍历了字符串变化的所有可能性，直到找到最终的目标字符串。

class Solution {
public:
    int ladderLength(string beginWord, string endWord, vector<string>& wordList) {
        unordered_map<string,bool> hash;
        for(int i=0;i<wordList.size();i++) hash[wordList[i]]=true;
        if(hash.count(endWord)==0) return 0;
        queue<pair<string,int>> q;
        q.push(pair<string,int>(beginWord,1));
        while(!q.empty())
        {
            string word=q.front().first;
            int count=q.front().second;
            q.pop();
            for(int i=0;i<word.size();i++)
            {
                for(char c='a';c<='z';c++)
                {
                    string newWord=word;
                    newWord[i]=c;
                    if(newWord==endWord) return count+1;
                    else if(hash.count(newWord)) 
                    {
                        hash.erase(newWord);
                        q.push(pair<string,int>(newWord,count+1));
                    }
                }
            }
        }
        return 0;
    }
};