String Transformation
Function Name: stringTransform
Description
Write a function named stringTransform that takes two strings as parameters, source and target. The function should determine if it is possible to transform the source string into the target string by replacing one character at a time. At each step, the new string must be in a given dictionary of valid words. The transformation is case sensitive and must use the smallest number of steps possible. The function should return the number of steps required for the transformation. If the transformation is impossible, the function should return -1.
Requirements
- The function must take exactly two parameters: source (a string) and target (a string).
- A local dictionary of valid words (array of strings) should be hardcoded into the function.
- All transformations must occur in the smallest number of steps.
- Characters replaced in each step must result in a valid word present in the dictionary.
- The function must be case sensitive, meaning 'a' is different from 'A'.
- The function should return an integer representing the number of steps required for the transformation, or -1 if it's impossible.
- The function should have an optimized approach to avoid unnecessary computations.
Examples
Example 1: stringTransform('cat', 'dog') should return 4, if the dictionary is ['cat', 'bat', 'bet', 'bot', 'bog', 'dog'].Example 2: stringTransform('hello', 'world') should return -1, if no valid transformation sequence exists within the dictionary.
Links
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