Leetcode 1293. Shortest Path in a Grid with Obstacles Elimination
Find the minimum number of steps from the top-left to bottom-right in a 4-directional binary grid if you may remove up to k obstacles; treat each position together with remaining eliminations as the state and perform a shortest-path search (BFS) over that expanded state space, returning the step count or -1 if unreachable.
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Late July, 2026
Late July, 2026
You are given an m x n integer matrix grid where each cell is either 0 (empty) or 1 (obstacle). You can move up, down, left, or right from and to an empty cell in one step. Return the minimum number of steps to walk from the upper left corner (0, 0) to the lower right corner (m - 1, n - 1) given that you can eliminate at most k obstacles. If it is not possible to find such walk return -1. Input: grid = [[0,0,0],[1,1,0],[0,0,0],[0,1,1],[0,0,0]], k = 1 Output: 6 Explanation: The shortest path without eliminating any obstacle is 10. The shortest path with one obstacle elimination at position (3,2) is 6. Such path is (0,0) -> (0,1) -> (0,2) -> (1,2) -> (2,2) -> (3,2) -> (4,2). Input: grid = [[0,1,1],[1,1,1],[1,0,0]], k = 1 Output: -1 Explanation: We need to eliminate at least two obstacles to find such a walk.
Mid February, 2026
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