Given two words (start and end), and a dictionary, find the length of shortest transformation sequence fromstart toend, such that:
- Only one letter can be changed at a time
- 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.
public int ladderLength(String start, String end, HashSet<String> dict) {
// Start typing your Java solution below
// DO NOT write main() function
if (start.equals(end)) {
return 0;
}
Queue<String> que = new LinkedList<String>();
que.offer(end);
dict.add(start);
int time = 1;
int layer = que.size();
while (!que.isEmpty()) {
String now = que.poll();
layer--;
if (now.equals(start)) {
return time;
}
isInDic(dict, now, que);
if (layer == 0 && !que.isEmpty()) {
layer = que.size();
time++;
}
}
return 0;
}
private void isInDic(HashSet<String> dict, String word, Queue<String> que) {
for (int i = 0; i < word.length(); i++) {
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(word);
for (char c = 'a'; c <= 'z'; c++) {
sb.setCharAt(i, c);
String t = sb.toString();
if (dict.contains(t)) {
dict.remove(t);
que.offer(t);
}
}
}
}
Konw Something:
1. StringBuilder has a method named setCharAt(int arg0,char arg1).