Leetcode 127. Word Ladder

Think those words can form a graph, do the BFS in the graph to find the shortest path from the startWord to the endWord.

public class Solution {
    public int ladderLength(String beginWord, String endWord, List<String> wordList) {
        if (wordList == null) {
            return 0;
        }
        
        // coverting list to hashset which reduces the time cost of contains()
        HashSet<String> dict = new HashSet<>();
        for (String word : wordList) {
            dict.add(word);
        }
        
        
        if (beginWord.equals(endWord)) {
            return 1;
        }
        
        int length = 1;
        
        Queue<String> queue = new LinkedList<>();
        HashSet<String> words = new HashSet<>();
        queue.offer(beginWord);
        words.add(beginWord);
        
        while (!queue.isEmpty()) {
            length++;
            int size = queue.size();
            for (int i=0; i<size; i++) {
                String word = queue.poll();
                for (String s : getTransform(word, dict, words)) {
                    if (s.equals(endWord))
                        return length;
                    if (!words.contains(s)) {
                        queue.offer(s);
                        words.add(s);
                    }
                }
            }
        }
        
        return 0;
    }
    
    private static HashSet<String> getTransform(String word, HashSet<String> dict, HashSet<String> words) {
        HashSet<String> set = new HashSet<>();
        // replace each letter in the word by 26 lowercase letters from 'a' to 'z'
        // check each combination in the dict
        for (int i=0; i<word.length(); i++) {
            for (char c='a'; c<='z'; c++) {
                if (c == word.charAt(i)) continue;
                StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(word);
                sb.setCharAt(i, c);
                if (dict.contains(sb.toString())) {
                    set.add(sb.toString());
                }
            }
        }
        return set;
    }
}