2976. Minimum Cost to Convert String I

[mah-shamim]

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: o 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]

Hint:

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

[mah-shamim]

To solve this problem, we'll use a graph-based approach. Specifically, we'll build a graph where each character is a node, and there's a directed edge from one character to another if we can convert the former to the latter at a given cost. We will then use the Floyd-Warshall algorithm to find the shortest paths between all pairs of characters, which will help us determine the minimum cost to convert each character in the source string to the corresponding character in the target string.

Here is the PHP code implementing this solution: 2976. Minimum Cost to Convert String I

<?php
// Example usage:
$source1 = "abcd";
$target1 = "acbe";
$original1 = ["a","b","c","c","e","d"];
$changed1 = ["b","c","b","e","b","e"];
$cost1 = [2,5,5,1,2,20];

echo minimumCost($source1, $target1, $original1, $changed1, $cost1); // Output: 28

$source2 = "aaaa";
$target2 = "bbbb";
$original2 = ["a","c"];
$changed2 = ["c","b"];
$cost2 = [1,2];

echo minimumCost($source2, $target2, $original2, $changed2, $cost2); // Output: 12

$source3 = "abcd";
$target3 = "abce";
$original3 = ["a"];
$changed3 = ["e"];
$cost3 = [10000];

echo minimumCost($source3, $target3, $original3, $changed3, $cost3); // Output: -1

?>

Explanation:

1. Graph Initialization:

   • We initialize a 26x26 matrix (graph) where each element represents the cost to convert one character to another. Initially, we set all costs to a large number ($inf) except for the diagonal elements, which we set to 0 because converting a character to itself has no cost.

2. Graph Population:

   • We fill the graph with the given transformation costs. If multiple costs are given for the same transformation, we take the minimum cost.

3. Floyd-Warshall Algorithm:

   • This algorithm computes the shortest paths between all pairs of nodes. After running this algorithm, graph[i][j] will contain the minimum cost to convert character i to character j.

4. Conversion Cost Calculation:

   • For each character in the source string, we find the cost to convert it to the corresponding character in the target string using our precomputed graph. If any conversion is impossible (indicated by a cost of $inf), we return -1. Otherwise, we sum up all the conversion costs to get the total minimum cost.

This approach ensures that we efficiently compute the minimum conversion cost, even for large input sizes.