Nearest Exit from Entrance in Maze

Category

Graphs - BFS

Checkbox

Difficulty

Medium

Index

Key Ideas

The key idea to solve this problem is to perform a breadth-first search (BFS) starting from the entrance of the maze and keep track of the distances from the entrance to each cell, until reaching the nearest exit.

Problem Number

1926

Problem Summary

The problem "Nearest Exit from Entrance in Maze" is a medium difficulty problem categorized under Graphs - BFS. The goal is to find the shortest distance from the entrance to the nearest exit in a maze represented by a matrix. A key pitfall to watch out for is handling cases where there is no valid path from the entrance to an exit, in which case -1 should be returned.

Solution Summary

To find the nearest exit from an entrance in a maze, we can use a breadth-first search (BFS) algorithm. The key idea is to start from the entrance and explore all possible paths in a layered manner, keeping track of the distance from the entrance to each cell. By using a queue data structure, we can efficiently traverse the maze and update the distance values as we progress. Once we reach an exit cell, we can return the distance value associated with it, which represents the shortest path from the entrance to that exit. This BFS approach ensures that we find the nearest exit from the entrance in the maze.