LeetCode 2976, Medium. Topics: Array, String, Graph Theory, Shortest Path. View on LeetCode.
Generate this problem as a practice environment: tested reference solution, 22 parametrized pytest cases, and a playground notebook:
Problem
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].
Examples
Constraints
- 1 <= source.length == target.length <= 10^5
- 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] <= 10^6
- original[i] != changed[i]
Solution
Reference implementation from solution.py on GitHub, full suite in test_solution.py:
Complexity
NeetCode All. Last modified on September 7, 2026