Word Ladder
A transformation sequence from word beginWord to word endWord using a dictionary wordList is a sequence of words beginWord -> s1 -> s2 -> ... -> sk such that:
Every adjacent pair of words differs by a single letter.
Every si for 1 <= i <= k is in wordList. Note that beginWord does not need to be in wordList.
sk == endWord
Given two words, beginWord and endWord, and a dictionary wordList, return the number of words in the shortest transformation sequence from beginWord to endWord, or 0 if no such sequence exists.
var ladderLength = function(beginWord, endWord, wordList) {
const wordSet = new Set(wordList)
let queue = [beginWord];
let steps = 1;
while(queue.length) {
const next = [];
// loop over each word in the queue
for(let word of queue) {
if(word === endWord) return steps;
// loop over each char of the word
for(let i = 0; i < word.length; i++) {
// and replace the char with letters from [a - z]
for(let j = 0; j < 26; j++) {
const newWord = word.slice(0, i) + String.fromCharCode(j + 97) + word.slice(i+1);
// if the new word exist in the word list add it to the queue
if(wordSet.has(newWord)) {
next.push(newWord);
wordSet.delete(newWord);
}
}
}
}
queue = next
steps++;
}
return 0;
};Related Problems
You are controlling a robot that is located somewhere in a room. The room is modeled as an m x n binary grid where 0 represents a wall and 1 represents an empty slot.
The robot starts at an unknown location in the room that is guaranteed to be empty, and you do not have access to the grid, but you can move the robot using the given API Robot.
You are tasked to use the robot to clean the entire room (i.e., clean every empty cell in the room). The robot with the four given APIs can move forward, turn left, or turn right. Each turn is 90 degrees.
When the robot tries to move into a wall cell, its bumper sensor detects the obstacle, and it stays on the current cell.
You are given a 2D integer array edges representing a tree with n nodes, numbered from 0 to n - 1, rooted at node 0, where edges[i] = [u_i, v_i] means there is an edge between the nodes v_i and u_i.
You are also given a 0-indexed integer array colors of size n, where colors[i] is the color assigned to node i.
We want to find a node v such that every node in the subtree of v has the same color.
Return the size of such a subtree with the maximum number of nodes possible.
Given a string s and a dictionary of strings wordDict, return true if s can be segmented into a space-separated sequence of one or more dictionary words.
Note that the same word in the dictionary may be reused multiple times in the segmentation.
Given an m x n 2D binary grid grid which represents a map of '1's (land) and '0's (water), return the number of islands.
An island is surrounded by water and is formed by connecting adjacent lands horizontally or vertically. You may assume all four edges of the grid are all surrounded by water.