Given two words (start and end), and a dictionary, find the length of the 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
For example,
Given:
start = “hit”
end = “cog”
dict = [“hot”,”dot”,”dog”,”lot”,”log”]
As one shortest transformation is “hit” ->”hot” ->”dot” ->”dog” ->”cog”, the program should 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.
Ladder Length in Java
public int ladderLength(String start, String end, HashSet<String> dict) {
if (dict.size() == 0)
return 0;
dict.add(end);
LinkedList<String> wordQueue = new LinkedList<String>();
LinkedList<Integer> distanceQueue = new LinkedList<Integer>();
wordQueue.add(start);
distanceQueue.add(1);
//track the shortest path
int result = Integer.MAX_VALUE;
while (!wordQueue.isEmpty()) {
String currWord = wordQueue.pop();
Integer currDistance = distanceQueue.pop();
if (currWord.equals(end)) {
result = Math.min(result, currDistance);
}
for (int i = 0; i < currWord.length(); i++) {
char[] currCharArr = currWord.toCharArray();
for (char c = ’a’; c <= ’z’; c++) {
currCharArr[i] = c;
String newWord = new String(currCharArr);
if (dict.contains(newWord)) {
wordQueue.add(newWord);
distanceQueue.add(currDistance + 1);
dict.remove(newWord);
}
}
}
}
if (result < Integer.MAX_VALUE)
return result;
else
return 0;
}
What do we learn from this Ladder Length Problem?
• Use breadth-first or depth-first search to solve problems
• Use two queues, one for words and another for counting
