Given N * M string array of O's and X's. The task is to find the number of 'X' total shapes. 'X' shape consists of one or more adjacent X's (diagonals not included)

Here is a simple and easy solution using BFS and Recursion .It execution time is 0.01s.

#include <bits/stdc++.h>
using namespace std;
vector<pair<int,int>> dir={{0,1},{1,0},{0,-1},{-1,0}};
void BFS(vector< vector<char> > & a,int n,int m,int x,int y)
{
    if(x<0||y<0||x>=n||y>=m)
    return ;
    if(a[x][y]!='X')
    return ;
    a[x][y]='V';
    for(int i=0;i<4;++i)
    {
        BFS(a,n,m,dir[i].first+x,dir[i].second+y);
    }
    
}

int main() {
	//code
	int t;
	cin>>t;
	while(t--)
	{
	    int n,m;
	    cin>>n>>m;
	    vector< vector<char> > a(n,vector<char>(m));
	    for(int i=0;i<n;++i)
	    {
	        for(int j=0;j<m;++j)
	        {  
	          cin>>a[i][j];
	        }
	    }
	    
	    int cnt =0;
	    for(int i=0;i<n;++i)
	    {
	        for(int j=0;j<m;++j)
	        {
	          if(a[i][j]=='X')
	          {
	              cnt++;
	              BFS(a,n,m,i,j);
	          }
	       }
	    }
	    cout<<cnt<<endl;
	}
	return 0;
}