Word Ladder

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.

Java代码：

public static int ladderLength(String start, String end, Set<String> dict) {
		if (start.equals(end))
			return 0;
		Queue<String> queue = new LinkedList<>();
		queue.offer(start);
		int min = Integer.MAX_VALUE;
		String tmp = queue.poll();
		for (String s : dict) {
			if (isNext(tmp, s)){
				if (s.equals(end))
					return 1;
			queue.offer(s);
			}
		}
		dict.remove(tmp);
		while (!queue.isEmpty()) {
			String tmp2 = queue.poll();
			int k = ladderLength(tmp2, end, dict);
			if (min > (k + 1))
				min = k + 1;
		}
		return min;
	}

	private static boolean isNext(String s1, String s2) {
		if (s1.length() == 0 || s2.length() == 0 || s1.length() != s2.length())
			return false;
		int len = s1.length();
		int count = 0;
		for (int i = 0; i < len; i++) {
			if (s1.charAt(i) != s2.charAt(i))
				count++;
		}
		return count == 1 ? true : false;
	}

运行测试之后，代码超时

参考代码如下；

public class Solution {
    public static int ladderLength(String start, String end, HashSet<String> dict) {  
           
            if (dict.size() == 0)    
                return 0;   
       
            LinkedList<String> wordQueue = new LinkedList<String>();  
            LinkedList<Integer> distanceQueue = new LinkedList<Integer>();  
       
            wordQueue.add(start);  
            distanceQueue.add(1);  
       
            while(!wordQueue.isEmpty()){  
                String currWord = wordQueue.pop();  
                Integer currDistance = distanceQueue.pop();  
                if(currWord.equals(end)){  
                    return currDistance;  
                }  
                for(int i=0; i<currWord.length(); i++){  
                    char[] currCharArr = currWord.toCharArray();  
                    for(char c='a'; c<='z'; c++){  
                        currCharArr[i] = c;  
       
                        String newWord = new String(currCharArr);  
                        if(dict.contains(newWord)){  
                            wordQueue.add(newWord);  
                            distanceQueue.add(currDistance+1);  
                            dict.remove(newWord);  
                        }  
                    }  
                }  
            }  
                return 0;  
        }  
}