Problem:
(I):
Give two words (start and end), and a dictionary.
(I) Find the length of shortest transformation sequence from start to end,
(II) find all shortest transformation sequence(s) 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.
Analysis:
12XXms
Solutions:
C++:
bool IsConnected(const string& left, const string& right)
{
int num_diff = 0;
for(int i = 0; i < left.size(); ++i) {
if(left[i] != right[i])
++num_diff;
if(num_diff > 1)
return false;
}
return num_diff == 1 ? true : false;
}
int ladderLength(string start, string end, unordered_set<string> &dict) {
dict.erase(start);
dict.erase(end);
if(dict.size() == 0)
return 0;
if(IsConnected(start, end))
return 2;
map<string, int> end_neighbors;
for(unordered_set<string>::iterator it = dict.begin(); it != dict.end(); ++it) {
if(IsConnected(*it, end))
end_neighbors[*it] = 1;
}
vector<vector<string> > cached_words_level;
vector<string> cached_words;
cached_words.push_back(start);
cached_words_level.push_back(cached_words);
for(int level = 0; !cached_words_level[level].empty() ; ++level) {
cached_words.clear();
int size_level = cached_words_level[level].size();
for(int i = 0; i < size_level; ++i) {
string curr_word = cached_words_level[level][i];
for(unordered_set<string>::iterator it = dict.begin(); it != dict.end();) {
if(IsConnected(*it, curr_word)) {
if(end_neighbors[*it] == 1)
return level + 3;
cached_words.push_back(*it);
unordered_set<string>::iterator it_delete = it;
++it;
dict.erase(it_delete);
} else
++it;
}
}
cached_words_level.push_back(cached_words);
}
return 0;
}
Java:
Python: