Lintcode 120. Word Ladder (Medium) (Python) (超时)

Word Ladder

Description:

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
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.

Notice
Return 0 if there is no such transformation sequence.
All words have the same length.
All words contain only lowercase alphabetic characters.

Code:

超时

class Solution:
    """
    @param: start: a string
    @param: end: a string
    @param: dict: a set of string
    @return: An integer
    """
    def ladderLength(self, start, end, dict):
        # write your code here
        dict = list(dict)
        cur = [start]
        def compare(word1, word2):
            if word2==None:
                return False
            cnt = 0
            for i in range(len(word1)):
                if word1[i]!=word2[i]:
                    cnt += 1
            if cnt==1:
                return True
            else:
                return False
        def bfs():
            res = 1
            while True:
                if res>len(dict)+2:
                    return res
                for i in range(len(cur)):
                    if compare(cur[i], end):
                        return res+1
                tmp = []
                for i in range(len(cur)):
                    for j in range(len(dict)):
                        if compare(cur[i], dict[j]):
                            tmp.append(dict[j])
                            dict[j] = None
                cur[:] = tmp[:]
                res += 1
        return bfs()