LeetCode 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.

题目地址：https://oj.leetcode.com/problems/word-ladder/

采用BFS遍历，分别遍历start单词中的每个字母，找出只替换一个字母，在dict中出现的单词，将其放入队列。然后再依次遍历队列中的值。

public static int ladderLength(String start, String end,
			HashSet<String> dict) {
		int count = 1;
		Queue<String> queue = new LinkedList<String>();
		Set<String> set = new HashSet<String>();
		queue.add(start);
		int distance = 1;
		while (count > 0) {
			while (count > 0) {
				char chars[] = queue.poll().toCharArray();
				for (int i = 0; i < chars.length; i++) {
					char temp = chars[i];
					for (char c = 'a'; c <= 'z'; c++) {
						if (c == temp)
							continue;
						chars[i] = c;
						String str = new String(chars);
						if (str.equals(end))
							return distance + 1;
						if (dict.contains(str) && !set.contains(str)) {
							set.add(str);
							queue.add(str);
						}
					}
					chars[i] = temp;
				}
				count--;
			}
			count = queue.size();
			distance++;
		}
		return 0;
	}