[leetcode] 127. Word Ladder

Description

Given two words (beginWord and endWord), and a dictionary’s word list, find the length of shortest transformation sequence from beginWord to endWord, such that:

1. Only one letter can be changed at a time.
2. Each transformed word must exist in the word list. Note that beginWord is not a transformed word.

Note:

• Return 0 if there is no such transformation sequence.
• All words have the same length.
• All words contain only lowercase alphabetic characters.
• You may assume no duplicates in the word list.
• You may assume beginWord and endWord are non-empty and are not the same.

Example 1:

Input:

beginWord = "hit",
endWord = "cog",
wordList = ["hot","dot","dog","lot","log","cog"]

Output:

5

Explanation:

As one shortest transformation is "hit" -> "hot" -> "dot" -> "dog" -> "cog",
return its length 5.

Example 2:

Input:

beginWord = "hit"
endWord = "cog"
wordList = ["hot","dot","dog","lot","log"]

Output:

0

Explanation:

The endWord "cog" is not in wordList, therefore no possible 
transformation.

分析

题目的意思是：给定开始单词和结束单词，还有一个单词词典，求从开始单词到结束单词的最小路径。

• 本题用了一个队列，先把start放进去，然后每次从队列里面取字符串，计算字符串与词典之间的距离，如果距离为1，我们就把字符串加入队列，然后长度+1，这样一直遍历到队列为空为止。

代码

class Solution {
public:
    int ladderLength(string beginWord, string endWord, vector<string>& wordList) {
        unordered_set<string> dict(wordList.begin(),wordList.end());
        unordered_map<string,int> m;
        queue<string> q;
        m[beginWord]=1;
        q.push(beginWord);
        while(!q.empty()){
            string word=q.front();
            q.pop();
            for(int i=0;i<word.size();i++){
                string newWord=word;
                for(char ch='a';ch<='z';ch++){
                    newWord[i]=ch;
                    if(dict.count(newWord)&&newWord==endWord){
                        return m[word]+1;
                    }
                    if(dict.count(newWord)&&!m.count(newWord)){
                        q.push(newWord);
                        m[newWord]=m[word]+1;
                    }
                }
            }
        }
        return 0;
    }
};

参考文献

[编程题]word-ladder
[LeetCode] Word Ladder 词语阶梯