***[Lintcode]Word Ladder 单词接龙

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

1. Each intermediate word must exist in the dictionary

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.

分析：需要用到一个队列，和一个map。队列用来储存待处理的字符串。数组用来保存dict里边每一个处理过的字符串以及从start到该字符串需要的转换次数。BFS算法保证了第一次遇到end字符串的转换次数就是最少的转化次数。

public class Solution {
    /**
      * @param start, a string
      * @param end, a string
      * @param dict, a set of string
      * @return an integer
      */
    public int ladderLength(String start, String end, Set<String> dict) {
         if (start == null || end == null || start.equals(end)  
                    || start.length() != end.length()){  
               return 1;  
          }  
          
          Queue<String> q = new LinkedList<String>();
          HashMap<String,Integer> dist=new HashMap<String,Integer>();                
          q.add(start);  
          dist.put(start, 1);     
          
          while(!q.isEmpty()) {
              String tmp = q.poll();
              int layer = dist.get(tmp);
              for(int i = 0; i < tmp.length(); i++) {
                  for(char j = 'a'; j <= 'z'; j++) {
                      if(tmp.charAt(i) == j) continue;
                      else {
                          StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(tmp);
                          sb.setCharAt(i, j);
                          if(sb.toString().equals(end)) return layer + 1;
                          else {
                              if(!dist.containsKey(sb.toString()) && dict.contains(
                                    sb.toString())) {
                                        q.add(sb.toString());
                                        dist.put(sb.toString(), layer + 1);
                                    }
                          }
                      }
                  }
              }
          }
          return 1;
    }
}