LeetCode127. Word Ladder

Description:

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.

分析：

       大概意思就是给定两个长度相同的单词，找到一个方法，让第一个单词变化到第二个单词，每次只能变化一个字母，而且中间出现的都必须是字典里的单词，求这个转换次数最少的方法要用经过多少个单词。

思路就是先把起点加到队列中, 然后每次将字典中与队首距离为1的字符串加进队列, 直到最后出队列的是终点字符串

代码如下：

public class Solution {

  public static int ladderLength(String beginWord, String endWord, List<String> wordList) {

    Queue<String> queue = new LinkedList<>();
    queue.offer(beginWord);
    HashMap<String, Integer> map = new HashMap<>();
    map.put(beginWord, 1);
    if (wordList.contains(beginWord)){
      wordList.remove(beginWord);
    }

    while (!queue.isEmpty() && wordList.size() > 0){
      String first = queue.poll();
      StringBuffer buffer;
      int leve = map.get(first);
      for (int i = 0; i < first.length(); i++){
        buffer = new StringBuffer(first);
        for (char c = 'a' ; c <= 'z'; c++){
          buffer.setCharAt(i, c);
          String tmp = buffer.toString();
          if (tmp.equals(first)){
            continue;
          }
          if (tmp.equals(endWord)){
            return leve + 1;
          }
          if (wordList.contains(tmp)){
            queue.offer(tmp);
            map.put(tmp, leve+1);
            wordList.remove(tmp);
          }
        }
      }
    }
    return 0;
  }

}

题目来源：https://leetcode.com/problems/word-ladder/