3235. Minimum Cost to Convert String I

Medium
Array
String
Graph
Shortest Path

Description

You are given two 0-indexed strings source and target, both of length n and consisting of lowercase English letters. You are also given two 0-indexed character arrays original and changed, and an integer array cost, where cost[i] represents the cost of changing the character original[i] to the character changed[i].

You start with the string source. In one operation, you can pick a character x from the string and change it to the character y at a cost of z if there exists any index j such that cost[j] == z, original[j] == x, and changed[j] == y.

Return the minimum cost to convert the string source to the string target using any number of operations. If it is impossible to convert source to target, return -1.

Note that there may exist indices i, j such that original[j] == original[i] and changed[j] == changed[i].

 

Example 1:

Input: source = "abcd", target = "acbe", original = ["a","b","c","c","e","d"], changed = ["b","c","b","e","b","e"], cost = [2,5,5,1,2,20]
Output: 28
Explanation: To convert the string "abcd" to string "acbe":
- Change value at index 1 from 'b' to 'c' at a cost of 5.
- Change value at index 2 from 'c' to 'e' at a cost of 1.
- Change value at index 2 from 'e' to 'b' at a cost of 2.
- Change value at index 3 from 'd' to 'e' at a cost of 20.
The total cost incurred is 5 + 1 + 2 + 20 = 28.
It can be shown that this is the minimum possible cost.

Example 2:

Input: source = "aaaa", target = "bbbb", original = ["a","c"], changed = ["c","b"], cost = [1,2]
Output: 12
Explanation: To change the character 'a' to 'b' change the character 'a' to 'c' at a cost of 1, followed by changing the character 'c' to 'b' at a cost of 2, for a total cost of 1 + 2 = 3. To change all occurrences of 'a' to 'b', a total cost of 3 * 4 = 12 is incurred.

Example 3:

Input: source = "abcd", target = "abce", original = ["a"], changed = ["e"], cost = [10000]
Output: -1
Explanation: It is impossible to convert source to target because the value at index 3 cannot be changed from 'd' to 'e'.

 

Constraints:

  • 1 <= source.length == target.length <= 105
  • source, target consist of lowercase English letters.
  • 1 <= cost.length == original.length == changed.length <= 2000
  • original[i], changed[i] are lowercase English letters.
  • 1 <= cost[i] <= 106
  • original[i] != changed[i]

Hints

Hint 1
Construct a graph with each letter as a node, and construct an edge <code>(a, b)</code> with weight <code>c</code> if we can change from character <code>a</code> to letter <code>b</code> with cost <code>c</code>. (Keep the one with the smallest cost in case there are multiple edges between <code>a</code> and <code>b</code>).
Hint 2
Calculate the shortest path for each pair of characters <code>(source[i], target[i])</code>. The sum of cost over all <code>i</code> in the range <code>[0, source.length - 1]</code>. If there is no path between <code>source[i]</code> and <code>target[i]</code>, the answer is <code>-1</code>.
Hint 3
Any shortest path algorithms will work since we only have <code>26</code> nodes. Since we only have at most <code>26 * 26</code> pairs, we can save the result to avoid re-calculation.
Hint 4
We can also use Floyd Warshall's algorithm to precompute all the results.

Statistics

Acceptance
57.3%
Submissions
194,918
Accepted
111,758