Skip to content

1263. Minimum Moves to Move a Box to Their Target Location 👍

Problem

A storekeeper is a game in which the player pushes boxes around in a warehouse trying to get them to target locations.

The game is represented by an m x n grid of characters grid where each element is a wall, floor, or box.

Your task is to move the box 'B' to the target position 'T' under the following rules:

  • The character 'S' represents the player. The player can move up, down, left, right in grid if it is a floor (empty cell).
  • The character '.' represents the floor which means a free cell to walk.
  • The character '#' represents the wall which means an obstacle (impossible to walk there).
  • There is only one box 'B' and one target cell 'T' in the grid.
  • The box can be moved to an adjacent free cell by standing next to the box and then moving in the direction of the box. This is a push.
  • The player cannot walk through the box.

Return the minimum number of pushes to move the box to the target. If there is no way to reach the target, return -1.

 

Example 1:

Input: grid = [["#","#","#","#","#","#"],
               ["#","T","#","#","#","#"],
               ["#",".",".","B",".","#"],
               ["#",".","#","#",".","#"],
               ["#",".",".",".","S","#"],
               ["#","#","#","#","#","#"]]
Output: 3
Explanation: We return only the number of times the box is pushed.

Example 2:

Input: grid = [["#","#","#","#","#","#"],
               ["#","T","#","#","#","#"],
               ["#",".",".","B",".","#"],
               ["#","#","#","#",".","#"],
               ["#",".",".",".","S","#"],
               ["#","#","#","#","#","#"]]
Output: -1

Example 3:

Input: grid = [["#","#","#","#","#","#"],
               ["#","T",".",".","#","#"],
               ["#",".","#","B",".","#"],
               ["#",".",".",".",".","#"],
               ["#",".",".",".","S","#"],
               ["#","#","#","#","#","#"]]
Output: 5
Explanation: push the box down, left, left, up and up.

 

Constraints:

  • m == grid.length
  • n == grid[i].length
  • 1 <= m, n <= 20
  • grid contains only characters '.', '#', 'S', 'T', or 'B'.
  • There is only one character 'S', 'B', and 'T' in the grid.