Word Ladder

-----QUESTION-----

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.

-----SOLUTION-----

class Solution {
public:
    int ladderLength(string start, string end, unordered_set<string> &dict) {
        int wordLen = start.length();
        int distance = 1;
        string current;
        queue<string> queue_to_push; //prepared for next loop
        queue<string> queue_to_pop; //string to deal in this loop
      
        queue_to_pop.push(start);
        while(!queue_to_pop.empty())
        {
            current = queue_to_pop.front();
            queue_to_pop.pop();
         
            for (int i = 0; i < wordLen; i++)  
            for (int j = 'a'; j <= 'z'; j++)  
            {  
                if (j == current[i]) //skip the current character  
                    continue;  
                char temp = current[i];  
                current[i] = j;  
                if(current==end)
                {
                    return distance+1;
                }
                if (dict.count(current) > 0) //exist such a word in the dict  
                {  
                    dict.erase(current); //delete such a word  
                    queue_to_push.push(current);
                }  
                current[i] = temp;  //restore the string
            }
            if(queue_to_pop.empty())
            {
                swap(queue_to_push, queue_to_pop);
                distance++;
            }
        }
        return 0; //fail to find
    }
};