Clone Graph @LeetCode

Clone an undirected graph. Each node in the graph contains a label and a list of its neighbors.

OJ's undirected graph serialization:

Nodes are labeled uniquely.

We use # as a separator for each node, and , as a separator for node label and each neighbor of the node.

As an example, consider the serialized graph {0,1,2#1,2#2,2}.

The graph has a total of three nodes, and therefore contains three parts as separated by #.

1. First node is labeled as 0. Connect node 0 to both nodes 1 and 2.
2. Second node is labeled as 1. Connect node 1 to node 2.
3. Third node is labeled as 2. Connect node 2 to node 2 (itself), thus forming a self-cycle.

Visually, the graph looks like the following:

       1
      / \
     /   \
    0 --- 2
         / \
         \_/

Word Ladder @LeetCode

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.