Given two words (start and end), and a dictionary, find the length of shortest transformation sequence from start to end, such that:
- Only one letter can be changed at a time
- 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));
}