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.

Solution:

class Solution {
public:
    int ladderLength(string start, string end, unordered_set<string> &dict) {
        if(!start.size() || !end.size()) return 0;
        if(start == end) return 1;
        queue<string> q;
        q.push(start);
        dict.erase(start);
        unordered_map<string, int> um;
        um[start] = 1;
        while(!q.empty())
        {
            string next = q.front();
            q.pop();
            for(int i = 0; i < next.size(); ++i)
            {
                string str = next;
                for(int j = 'a'; j <= 'z'; ++j)
                {
                    if(j == str[i]) continue;
                    str[i] = j;
                    if(str == end) return um[next] + 1;
                    if(dict.find(str) != dict.end())
                    {
                        q.push(str);
                        um[str] = um[next] + 1;
                        dict.erase(str);
                    }
                }
            }
        }

        return 0;
    }
};