127. Word Ladder

127. Word Ladder

Given two words (beginWord and endWord), and a dictionary's word list, find the length of shortest transformation sequence frombeginWord to endWord, such that:

1. Only one letter can be changed at a time
2. 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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思路：把每一个单词看成一个节点，如果其他的单词与它只有一个字母不同，可以认为是该节点的邻居节点。这题可以看成是图的遍历，寻找从开始节点到结尾节点的最短路径。

BFS:

class Solution {
    void addstring(string word,unordered_set<string> & wordList, queue<string> & tovisit)
    {
        wordList.erase(word);
        for(int i=0;i<word.size();i++)
        {
            char letter=word[i];
            for(int j=0;j<26;j++)
            {
                word[i]='a'+j;
                if(wordList.find(word)!=wordList.end())
                {
                    tovisit.push(word);
                    wordList.erase(word);
                }
            }
            word[i]=letter;
        }
    }
public:
    int ladderLength(string beginWord, string endWord, unordered_set<string>& wordList) {
       wordList.insert(endWord);
       int dis=2;
       queue<string> tovisit;
       addstring(beginWord,wordList,tovisit);//将其未访问过的邻居节点加入待访队列
       while(tovisit.size()>0)
       {
           int num=tovisit.size();
           for(int i=0;i<num;i++)
           {
               string word=tovisit.front();
               tovisit.pop();
               if(word==endWord) return dis;
               addstring(word,wordList,tovisit);
           }
           dis++;
       }
       return 0;
    }
};

BFS的改进：

从开始单词和结尾单词同时遍历，如果发现它们有共同的单词，说明已经找到了。

class Solution {
public:
    int ladderLength(string beginWord, string endWord, unordered_set<string>& wordList) {
       unordered_set<string> head,tail,*phead,*ptail;
       head.insert(beginWord);
       tail.insert(endWord);
       int dis=2;
       while(!head.empty()&&!tail.empty())
       {
           if(head.size()<tail.size())//保证phead指向较少元素的集合
           {
               phead=&head;
               ptail=&tail;
           }else
           {
               phead=&tail;
               ptail=&head;
           }
           unordered_set<string> tmp;//存储当前单词的邻居，它是下一次遍历的对象
           for(auto it=phead->begin();it!=phead->end();it++)
           {
               string word=*it;
               wordList.erase(word);
               for(int i=0;i<word.size();i++)
               {
                   char letter=word[i];
                   for(int j=0;j<26;j++)
                   {
                       word[i]='a'+j;
                       if(ptail->find(word)!=ptail->end())
                       return dis;
                       if(wordList.find(word)!=wordList.end())
                       {
                           tmp.insert(word);
                           wordList.erase(word);
                       }
                   }
                   word[i]=letter;
               }
           }
           dis++;
           swap(tmp,*phead);
       }
       return 0;
    }
};