leetcode 之 Word Ladder

Word Ladder

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",
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.

思想：采用宽度优先搜索，每次把当前单词可以变换到的所有可能单词添加到队列中，一层一层遍历，直到找到结果或队列为空

class Solution {
public:
    int ladderLength(string start, string end, unordered_set<string> &dict) {
    	if(start.size() != end.size())return 0;
    	queue<string> path;//存放当前层的所有可能的单词
    	path.push(start);
    	dict.erase(start);
    	int count = 1;//当前层的单词个数
    	int level = 1;//当前的层数
    	while (!path.empty())
    	{
    		string word = path.front();
    		path.pop();
    		--count;
    		int i;
    		for (i = 0;i < word.size();++i)
    		{
    			string tmp = word;
    			char ch;
    			for (ch = 'a';ch <= 'z';ch++)
    			{
    				if(tmp[i] != ch)//改变一个字符
    				{
    					tmp[i] = ch;
    					if(tmp == end)return level + 1;
    					unordered_set<string>::iterator iter = dict.find(tmp);
    					if (iter != dict.end())
    					{
    						path.push(tmp);
    						
    					}	
    					dict.erase(tmp);				
    				}
    			}
    		}
    		if (count == 0)//当前层已经遍历完
    		{
    			count = path.size();
    			level++;
    		}
    	}
    	return 0;//没有找到
    }

};