Word Ladder (Java)

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.

每次变化一个的这种类型的题优先考虑有BFS，每次控制变化其中一个字母，然后和dict中的比较，如果一样就加到树的下一层。count值由层数决定。这道题相当于树的最小深度。

注意char和string的区别，尤其是equals方法和contains方法，编译器不会报错。前后如果一个是字符一个是字符串，即使字符串只含一个字符（'b',"b"），也不会相等。

另注意：LinkedList是双链队列，add是加在队尾，push是加在队头，poll和pop都是删队头！

Source

public class Solution {
    public int ladderLength(String start, String end, Set<String> dict) {
        LinkedList<String> queue = new LinkedList<String>();
        queue.add(start);
        
        int count = 1;
        int cur = 1;
        int next = 0;
        
        while(!queue.isEmpty()){
        	String a = queue.poll();
        	if(dict.contains(a)){
        		dict.remove(a);  //dict里有start的先删除
        	}
        	cur --;
        	
        	
        	char[] str = a.toCharArray();
        	for(int i = 0; i < str.length; i++){
        		char temp = str[i];
        		for(char j = 'a'; j <= 'z'; j ++){
        			if(j == temp) continue;  //***
        			str[i] = j;
        			String b = new String(str); //注意不是toString 必须要先将str变为string才可以用下面的equals和contains判断
        			if(b.equals(end)) return ++count; //要写在判断contains之前       				
        			if(dict.contains(b)){   //contains
        					
        				queue.add(b);
        				next ++;
        				dict.remove(b);	//remove	
        					
        			}
        				
        		}
        		str[i] = temp; //变化完记得还原，这样可以保证每次遍历只变了其中一个字母
        		
        		
        	}
        	if(cur == 0){
        		cur = next;
        		next = 0;
        		count ++; //dict一层可能会有多个只变一个元素的  count应该在此处加而非dict.contains里面
        	}
        	
        }
        return 0;  
    }
}

Test

    public static void main(String[] args){
    	Set<String> dict = new HashSet<String>();
    	dict.add("hot");
    	dict.add("cog");
    	dict.add("dot");
    	dict.add("dog");
    	dict.add("hit");
    	dict.add("lot");
    	dict.add("log");
    	//dict.add("dot");
    	
    	System.out.println(new Solution().ladderLength("hit", "cog", dict));
    	//System.out.println(new Solution().ladderLength("a", "c", dict));
    
    }