leetcode-WordLadder

Word Ladder

  Total Accepted: 10243  Total Submissions: 58160 My Submissions

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.

Have you been asked this question in an interview?  Yes

   此题是图的遍历问题，要找一条起始点到目标点最短的路径，如果存在这样的路径则返回路径长度，否则返回0。 刚开始想到用深度优先搜索遍历，但是时间复杂度太大，于是转为用宽搜，把起始点放入队列中，队列中的节点是一个字符串，因为要找到最短路径，所以在取出队首节点时要知道该节点属于第几层被搜索的节点，即路径长度，我用了levels来保存当前遍历的是第几层的节点，然后扩展该节点，把编辑距离为1并且在字典中出现的字符串加入队尾，并从字典中删除该字符串。

在找编辑距离为1的字符串时，我试了两种方法，一种是遍历字典，找到编辑记录为1的字符串，如果字典数目很大的话，每次都遍历字典耗时太多了，结果就是TLE，后来直接对节点字符串进行修改一个字符来得到扩展字符串才通过。

<span style="font-size:14px;">class Solution {
public:
    typedef queue<string,deque<string>> qq;
    int ladderLength(string start, string end, unordered_set<string> &dict) {
        //Use queue to implement bfs operation
        qq q;
        q.push(start);
        dict.erase(start);
        
        int currLevelLens = 1, nextLevelLens; 
        int levels = 1;  //To be returned answer, the total bfs levels be traversed
        string front, str;
        
        while (!q.empty()) {
            nextLevelLens = 0;
            while (currLevelLens--) {  // Traverse the node of current level
                string front = q.front();
                q.pop();
                if (front == end)
                    return levels;
                for (int i=0; i<front.size(); ++i) {
                    for (char j='a'; j<='z'; ++j) { // transform
                        if (front[i]=='j')
                            continue;
                        str = front;
                        str[i] = j;    
                        if (dict.find(str) != dict.end()) { 
                            ++nextLevelLens;
                            q.push(str);
                            dict.erase(str);
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
            currLevelLens = nextLevelLens;
            ++levels;
        }
        return 0;
    }
    
};
</span>

但是这样的方法改变了dict的内容，有没有不改变dict的方法呢？我试了用一个unorder_set来保存被搜索过的字符串,但是耗时比前一种方法多。

class Solution {
public:
    typedef queue<string,deque<string>> qq;
    int ladderLength(string start, string end, unordered_set<string> &dict) {
        //Use queue to implement bfs operation
        qq q;
        q.push(start);
        
        int currLevelLens = 1, nextLevelLens; 
        int levels = 1;  //To be returned answer, the total bfs levels be traversed
        string front, str;
        searchedStrs.insert(start);
        while (!q.empty()) {
            nextLevelLens = 0;
            while (currLevelLens--) {  // Traverse the node of current level
                string front = q.front();
                q.pop();
                if (front == end)
                    return levels;
                for (int i=0; i<front.size(); ++i) {
                    for (char j='a'; j<='z'; ++j) { // transform
                        if (front[i]==j)
                            continue;
                        str = front;
                        str[i] = j;
                        
                        if (searchedStrs.find(str) == searchedStrs.end() && dict.find(str) != dict.end()) { 
                            ++nextLevelLens;
                            q.push(str);
                            //dict.erase(str);
                            searchedStrs.insert(str);
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
            currLevelLens = nextLevelLens;
            ++levels;
        }
        return 0;
    }
private:
    unordered_set<string> searchedStrs;
};

Python解法：

有参考Google Norvig的拼写纠正例子：http://norvig.com/spell-correct.html

class Solution:
    # @param word, a string
    # @return a list of transformed words
    def edit(self, word):
        alphabet = string.ascii_lowercase
        splits = [(word[:i],word[i:]) for i in range(len(word)+1)]
        replaces = [a+c+b[1:] for a,b in splits for c in alphabet if b]
        replaces.remove(word)
        return replaces
        
    # @param start, a string
    # @param end, a string
    # @param dict, a set of string
    # @return an integer
    def ladderLength(self, start, end, dict):
        currQueue = []
        currQueue.append(start)
        dict.remove(start)
        ret = 0
        while 1:
            ret += 1
            nextQueue = []
            while len(currQueue):
                s = currQueue.pop(0)
                if s == end:
                    return ret
                editWords = self.edit(s)

                for word in editWords:
                    if word in dict:
                        dict.remove(word)
                        nextQueue.append(word)
            if len(nextQueue)==0:
                return 0
            currQueue = nextQueue
        return 0