# LeetCode 200. Number of Islands

## The Problem

Link to original problem on LeetCode.

Given an m x n 2D binary grid grid which represents a map of '1's (land) and '0's (water), return the number of islands.

An island is surrounded by water and is formed by connecting adjacent lands horizontally or vertically. You may assume all four edges of the grid are all surrounded by water.

Examples

Example 1:

Input: grid = [
["1","1","1","1","0"],
["1","1","0","1","0"],
["1","1","0","0","0"],
["0","0","0","0","0"]
]
Output: 1


Example 2:

Input: grid = [
["1","1","0","0","0"],
["1","1","0","0","0"],
["0","0","1","0","0"],
["0","0","0","1","1"]
]
Output: 3

Constraints
• m == grid.length
• n == grid[i].length
• 1 <= m, n <= 300
• grid[i][j] is '0' or '1'.

## My Solution

This problem is fairly straightforward. We can just start iterating through the grid, and calling a depth first search function dfs on any cell equal to '1'. Our dfs function mutates the grid to make any visited square equal to neither '0' nor '1'. This means that we'll only ever call dfs on a contiguous island once, as future visits to cells that are part of the island won't trigger the function call anymore. We simply store the number of these initial calls to dfs in a count variable and return it to get the number of islands.

function numIslands(grid: string[][]): number {	let count = 0;	for (let row = 0; row < grid.length; row++) {		for (let column = 0; column < grid[0].length; column++) {			// Since we overwrite grid cells in our dfs function,			// the first piece of land we find for every island			// is the only time we call dfs inside this loop			// directly. Thus, we can increment count by one here.			if (grid[row][column] === '1') {				count++;				dfs(grid, row, column);			}		}	}	return count;}function dfs(matrix: string[][], row: number, column: number) {	// We return early if we have invalid coordinates or water.	if (		row < 0 ||		column < 0 ||		row >= matrix.length ||		column >= matrix[0].length ||		matrix[row][column] !== '1'	)		return;	// Otherwise, we mutate the value of the matrix at the	// coordinates so we won't accidentally count it again later.	// This ensures we call dfs from numIslands just once per	// island. After mutation, we recursively call dfs again on	// the cells above, below, left, and right of the current	// cell.	matrix[row][column] = '✅';	dfs(matrix, row + 1, column);	dfs(matrix, row - 1, column);	dfs(matrix, row, column + 1);	dfs(matrix, row, column - 1);}

Our breadth first search solution is similar to the depth first search. In this case, we also create a queue to iterate over. Instead of recursively calling bfs as we did with dfs, we just add new cells to the queue.

function numIslands(grid: string[][]): number {	let count = 0;	let queue: [number, number][] = [];	for (let row = 0; row < grid.length; row++) {		for (let column = 0; column < grid[0].length; column++) {			// Since we overwrite grid cells in our bfs function,			// the first piece of land we find for every island			// is the only time we call bfs inside this loop			// directly. Thus, we can increment count by one here.			if (grid[row][column] === '1') {				count++;				bfs(grid, row, column);			}		}	}	function bfs(matrix: string[][], row: number, column: number) {		// Add the initial coordinates we called with to the queue.		queue.push([row, column]);		while (queue.length) {			// Get new coordinates from the queue.			const [r, c]: [number, number] = queue.shift()!;			// We skip this loop if we have invalid coordinates			// or we're on water.			if (				r < 0 ||				c < 0 ||				r >= matrix.length ||				c >= matrix[0].length ||				matrix[r][c] !== '1'			)				continue;			// Otherwise, mark this cell as visited and add			// neighbors to the end of the queue.			matrix[r][c] = '✅';			queue.push([r + 1, c]);			queue.push([r - 1, c]);			queue.push([r, c + 1]);			queue.push([r, c - 1]);		}	}	return count;}