Data Structure - Depth First
Traversal
Depth First Search (DFS) algorithm traverses a graph in a
depthward motion and uses a stack to remember to get the next
vertex to start a search, when a dead end occurs in any iteration.
As in the example given above, DFS algorithm traverses from S to
A to D to G to E to B first, then to F and lastly to C. It employs the
following rules.
Rule 1 − Visit the adjacent unvisited vertex. Mark it as
visited. Display it. Push it in a stack.
Rule 2 − If no adjacent vertex is found, pop up a vertex
from the stack. (It will pop up all the vertices from the stack,
which do not have adjacent vertices.)
Rule 3 − Repeat Rule 1 and Rule 2 until the stack is empty.
Ste
Traversal Description
p
1 Initialize the stack.
Mark S as visited and
put it onto the stack.
Explore any unvisited
adjacent node
from S. We have
2
three nodes and we
can pick any of them.
For this example, we
shall take the node in
an alphabetical order.
Mark A as visited and
put it onto the stack.
Explore any unvisited
adjacent node from
3
A. Both S and D are
adjacent to A but we
are concerned for
unvisited nodes only.
Visit D and mark it as
visited and put onto
the stack. Here, we
have B and C nodes,
which are adjacent
4
to D and both are
unvisited. However,
we shall again choose
in an alphabetical
order.
We choose B, mark it
as visited and put
onto the stack.
Here B does not have
5
any unvisited
adjacent node. So,
we pop B from the
stack.
We check the stack
top for return to the
previous node and
check if it has any
6
unvisited nodes.
Here, we find D to be
on the top of the
stack.
Only unvisited
adjacent node is
from D is C now. So
7
we visit C, mark it as
visited and put it onto
the stack.
As C does not have any unvisited adjacent node so we keep
popping the stack until we find a node that has an unvisited
adjacent node. In this case, there's none and we keep popping
until the stack is empty.
