Practice Minimum Genetic Mutation

Read the task, work through the examples, and check your approach against the constraints. Use the original LeetCode task for coding and submissions.

Medium#433

LeetCode Problem

Minimum Genetic Mutation

Hash Table String Breadth-First Search

Problem Statement

A gene string can be represented by an 8-character long string, with choices from 'A', 'C', 'G', and 'T'. Suppose we need to investigate a mutation from a gene string startGene to a gene string endGene where one mutation is defined as one single character changed in the gene string. There is also a gene bank bank that records all the valid gene mutations. A gene must be in bank to make it a valid gene string. Given the two gene strings startGene and endGene and the gene bank bank, return the minimum number of mutations needed to mutate from startGene to endGene. If there is no such a mutation, return -1. Note that the starting point is assumed to be valid, so it might not be included in the bank.

Source: Minimum Genetic Mutation on LeetCode. Use the original task for its coding environment and submissions.

Examples

# Example 1

Input

startGene = "AACCGGTT", endGene = "AACCGGTA", bank = ["AACCGGTA"]

Output

# Example 2

Input

startGene = "AACCGGTT", endGene = "AAACGGTA", bank = ["AACCGGTA","AACCGCTA","AAACGGTA"]

Output

Constraints

0 <= bank.length <= 10

startGene.length == endGene.length == bank[i].length == 8

startGene, endGene, and bank[i] consist of only the characters ['A', 'C', 'G', 'T'].

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