Word Ladder

Word Ladder

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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.

开始用DFS，无奈TLE,  也不奇怪，有很多重复的计算，后来用BFS顺利解决.

public class Solution {

    public int ladderLength(String start, String end, HashSet<String> dict) {
        int min = 0;
        Set<String> visit = new HashSet<>();
        Set<String> endSet = neighbors(end,dict);
        Queue<String> queue = new LinkedList<>();
        queue.add(start);
        while(!queue.isEmpty()){
            Queue<String> subQ = new LinkedList<>();
            while(!queue.isEmpty()){
                String s = queue.poll();
                if(visit.contains(s)) continue;
                visit.add(s);
                if(endSet.contains(s)) return min+2;
                Set<String> neighbors = neighbors(s,dict);
                for(String str: neighbors) subQ.add(str);
            }
            min++;
            queue = subQ;
        }
        return 0;
    }
    
    private  Set<String> neighbors(String a, Set<String> dict){
        Set<String> set = new HashSet<>();
        for(int i = 0 ; i < a.length(); i++){
            for(int j = 0; j < 26; j++){
                char[] arr = a.toCharArray();
                arr[i] = (char)('a'+j);
                String temp = new String(arr);
                if(dict.contains(temp)) set.add(temp);
            }
        }
        return set;
    }
}