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.

Note:

• Return 0 if there is no such transformation sequence.
• All words have the same length.
• All words contain only lowercase alphabetic characters.

思路：对于start word，分别置换每一个字母word.length() * 25种可能，如果存在在字典里，就把他加入到queue。同时维护一个visited set，避免重复word加入。

因为要返回level，关键在于知道当前level word在queue里的数目。所以我们维护两个变量，一个是当前数目curNum，一个是上一个level的数目lastNum。每加上一个word，就让当前curNum++；如果取出一个word，lastNum-- ；直到lastNum ==  0，说明这一个level里的word已经取完，level++；

    public int ladderLength(String start, String end, Set<String> dict) {
        int level = 1;
        Set<String> visited = new HashSet<String>();
        Queue<String> queue = new LinkedList<String>();
        queue.add(start);
        visited.add(start);
        int n = start.length();
        int curNum = 0;
        int lastNum = 1;

        while(!queue.isEmpty()) {
            String cur = queue.poll();
            for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) {
                char[] curArray = cur.toCharArray();
                for (char c = 'a'; c <= 'z'; c++) {
                    if (c == cur.charAt(i)) {
                        continue;
                    }
                    curArray[i] = c;
                    String tmp = new String(curArray);
                    if (end.equals(tmp)) {
                        return level+1;
                    }
                    if (dict.contains(tmp) && !visited.contains(tmp)){
                        queue.offer(tmp);
                        visited.add(tmp);
                        curNum++;
                    }
                }
            }
            lastNum--;
            if (lastNum == 0) {
                lastNum = curNum;
                curNum = 0;
                level++;
            }
        }
        return 0;
    }