leetcode解题笔记：127. Word Ladder

题目要求：
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:

Only one letter can be changed at a time
Each intermediate word must exist in the word list
For example,

Given:
beginWord = “hit”
endWord = “cog”
wordList = [“hot”,”dot”,”dog”,”lot”,”log”]
As one shortest transformation is “hit” -> “hot” -> “dot” -> “dog” -> “cog”,
return its length 5.

Note:

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

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解题思路
可以看做是一张简单图：每个点是wordList中的一个单词，点的相邻点是改变一个字母得到的单词，起点和终点则分别是startWord和endWord，找寻起点到终点的最短路径:

找寻最短路径，考虑使用BFS，一层一层遍历，每一层到起点的distance即为起点单词变到当前单词的路径长度，如hit起点层为1，hot层为2，dot与lot层为3，到最后终点层cog为5，则最短转化路径长度为5。

1. 利用队列存储点，进行BFS
2. 利用hashSet存储已经遍历过的点。如hot的相邻点为dot与lot，存入hash与队列，dot的相邻点为lot、hot与dog，但lot，hot都已在hash中（队列中）了，因此接下来只需遍历dog即可。

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代码

public class Solution {
    public int ladderLength(String beginWord, String endWord, Set<String> wordList) {
        if(wordList == null ) return 0;
        if(beginWord == endWord) return 1;

        wordList.add(beginWord);
        wordList.add(endWord);

        HashSet<String> hash = new HashSet<String>();
        Queue<String> queue = new LinkedList<String>();

        queue.offer(beginWord);
        hash.add(beginWord);

        int length = 1;
        //BFS遍历整张图
        while(!queue.isEmpty()){
            //length记录起点到终点的路径，每遍历一层+1
            length++;
            int size = queue.size();
            for (int i = 0; i < size; i++) {
                String word = queue.poll();
                //将当前点的未被遍历过的邻居点加入队列
                for(String next:getNextWords(word,wordList)){
                    if(next.equals(endWord)) return length;
                    if(!hash.contains(next)){
                        queue.offer(next);
                        hash.add(next);
                    }
                }
            }
        }

        return 0;
    }

    //获得一个点的相邻点，即一个词改变一个字母能得到的在wordList中的词
    public List<String> getNextWords(String word,Set<String> wordList){
        ArrayList<String> nextWords = new ArrayList<String>();
        for (char c = 'a'; c <= 'z'; c++) {
            for (int i = 0; i < word.length(); i++) {
                if (c == word.charAt(i)) {
                    continue;
                }
                String nextWord = replace(word, i, c);
                if (wordList.contains(nextWord)) {
                    nextWords.add(nextWord);
                }
            }
        }
        return nextWords;
    }

    private String replace(String s, int index, char c) {
        char[] chars = s.toCharArray();
        chars[index] = c;
        return new String(chars);
    }
}