Given two words (beginWord and endWord), and a dictionary's word list, find the length of shortest transformation sequence from beginWord to endWord, such that:
- Only one letter can be changed at a time.
- Each transformed word must exist in the word list. Note that beginWord is nota transformed word.
Note:
- Return 0 if there is no such transformation sequence.
- All words have the same length.
- All words contain only lowercase alphabetic characters.
- You may assume no duplicates in the word list.
- You may assume beginWord and endWord are non-empty and are not the same.
Example 1:
Input: beginWord = "hit", endWord = "cog", wordList = ["hot","dot","dog","lot","log","cog"] Output: 5 Explanation: As one shortest transformation is "hit" -> "hot" -> "dot" -> "dog" -> "cog", return its length 5.
Example 2:
Input: beginWord = "hit" endWord = "cog" wordList = ["hot","dot","dog","lot","log"] Output: 0 Explanation: The endWord "cog" is not in wordList, therefore no possible transformation.
题目大意:
给出开始和结束字符串,同时给出一个字符串字典,字典中所有的字符串都是不重复等长的。每次从上一个字符串只变动一个字节。求出最短次数,从beginWord到endWord。
解题思路:
DFS容易陷入无用的循环中,结果超时。应该使用BFS,将wordList转化为字典,没找到一个下一个符合的字符串,就要通过本位置的'a'-'z'找出全部的符合条件的字符串加入queue。
class Solution {
public:
int ladderLength(string beginWord, string endWord, vector<string>& wordList) {
// BFS
unordered_set<string> dict(wordList.begin(), wordList.end());
queue<string> todo;
todo.push(beginWord);
int ladder=1;
while(!todo.empty()){
int n = todo.size();
for(int i=0;i<n;i++){
string word = todo.front();
todo.pop();
if(word == endWord){
return ladder;
}
dict.erase(word);
for(int j=0;j<word.size();j++){
char c=word[j];
for(int k=0;k<26;k++){
word[j] = 'a'+k;
if(dict.find(word)!=dict.end()){
todo.push(word);
}
}
word[j]=c;
}
}
ladder++;
}
return 0;
}
};