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README.md

Given a list of words, each word consists of English lowercase letters.

Let's say word1 is a predecessor of word2 if and only if we can add exactly one letter anywhere in word1 to make it equal to word2.  For example, "abc" is a predecessor of "abac".

A word chain is a sequence of words [word_1, word_2, ..., word_k] with k >= 1, where word_1 is a predecessor of word_2, word_2 is a predecessor of word_3, and so on.

Return the longest possible length of a word chain with words chosen from the given list of words.

 

Example 1:

Input: ["a","b","ba","bca","bda","bdca"]
Output: 4
Explanation: one of the longest word chain is "a","ba","bda","bdca".

 

Note:

  1. 1 <= words.length <= 1000
  2. 1 <= words[i].length <= 16
  3. words[i] only consists of English lowercase letters.

 

Related Topics:
Hash Table, Dynamic Programming

Solution 1.

// OJ: https://leetcode.com/problems/longest-string-chain/
// Author: github.com/lzl124631x
// Time: O(N^2)
// Space: O(N)
class Solution {
public:
    int longestStrChain(vector<string>& A) {
        int N = A.size(), ans = 1;
        vector<int> id(N), len(N, 1);
        iota(begin(id), end(id), 0);
        sort(begin(id), end(id), [&](int a, int b) { return A[a].size() < A[b].size(); });
        vector<array<int, 26>> cnts(N);
        map<int, vector<int>> m;
        for (int i = 0; i < N; ++i) {
            for (char c : A[i]) cnts[i][c - 'a']++;
            m[A[i].size()].push_back(i);
        }
        for (auto &[cnt, ids] : m) {
            if (m.count(cnt - 1) == 0) continue;
            for (int i : ids) {
                for (int j : m[cnt - 1]) {
                    int diff = 0;
                    for (int k = 0; k < 26; ++k) {
                        diff += abs(cnts[i][k] - cnts[j][k]);
                        if (diff > 1) break;
                    }
                    if (diff == 1) len[i] = max(len[i], len[j] + 1);
                }
                ans = max(ans, len[i]);
            }
        }
        return ans;
    }
};

Solution 2.

// OJ: https://leetcode.com/problems/longest-string-chain/
// Author: github.com/lzl124631x
// Time: O(NSS)
// Space: O(NS)
// Ref: https://leetcode.com/problems/longest-string-chain/discuss/294890/C%2B%2BJavaPython-DP-Solution
class Solution {
public:
    int longestStrChain(vector<string>& A) {
        auto cmp = [](string &a, string &b) { return a.size() < b.size(); };
        sort(begin(A), end(A), cmp);
        unordered_map<string, int> dp;
        int ans = 1;
        for (auto &s : A) {
            for (int i = 0; i < s.size(); ++i) {
                dp[s] = max(dp[s], dp[s.substr(0, i) + s.substr(i + 1)] + 1);
                ans = max(ans, dp[s]);
            }
        }
        return ans;
    }
};