algorythms
Topological Sort
LC #269Hard

Alien Dictionary

Topological Sort
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Problem

Given a sorted dictionary of an alien language, determine the order of characters.

graphtopological-sortbfsstring

Constraints

  • 1 ≤ words.length ≤ 100
  • 1 ≤ words[i].length ≤ 100
  • Lowercase English letters only
  • Return "" if invalid (cycle or word is prefix of earlier word)

Example

Inputwords = ["wrt","wrf","er","ett","rftt"]
Output"wertf"
Why

From adjacent pairs: t<f, w<e, r<t, e<r → order: w,e,r,t,f

Hints — reveal one at a time