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Topological Sorting

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21 views8 pages

Topological Sorting

Uploaded by

kendoesntexist
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Topological Sorting

Topological sorting for Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) is a linear ordering of


vertices such that for every directed edge u-v, vertex u comes before v in the
ordering.
Note: Topological Sorting for a graph is not possible if the graph is not a
DAG.
Example:

Input: Graph :

Example

Output: 5 4 2 3 1 0
Explanation: The first vertex in topological sorting is always a vertex
with an in-degree of 0 (a vertex with no incoming edges). A
topological sorting of the following graph is “5 4 2 3 1 0”. There can be
more than one topological sorting for a graph. Another topological
sorting of the following graph is “4 5 2 3 1 0”.

Topological Sorting vs Depth First Traversal (DFS):


In DFS, we print a vertex and then recursively call DFS for its adjacent
vertices. In topological sorting, we need to print a vertex before its adjacent
vertices.
For example, In the above given graph, the vertex ‘5’ should be printed
before vertex ‘0’, but unlike DFS, the vertex ‘4’ should also be printed before
vertex ‘0’. So Topological sorting is different from DFS. For example, a DFS
of the shown graph is “5 2 3 1 0 4”, but it is not a topological sorting.

Topological Sorting in Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs)


DAGs are a special type of graphs in which each edge is directed such that
no cycle exists in the graph, before understanding why Topological sort only
exists for DAGs, lets first answer two questions:

Why Topological Sort is not possible for graphs with undirected


edges?

This is due to the fact that undirected edge between two vertices u
and v means, there is an edge from u to v as well as from v to u.
Because of this both the nodes u and v depend upon each other and
none of them can appear before the other in the topological ordering
without creating a contradiction.

Why Topological Sort is not possible for graphs having cycles?

Imagine a graph with 3 vertices and edges = {1 to 2 , 2 to 3, 3 to 1}


forming a cycle. Now if we try to topologically sort this graph starting
from any vertex, it will always create a contradiction to our definition.
All the vertices in a cycle are indirectly dependent on each other hence
topological sorting fails.

Hence, a Directed Acyclic Graph removes the contradiction created by


above two questions, hence it is suitable for topological ordering. A DFS
based solution to find a topological sort has already been discussed.

Topological order may not be Unique:


Topological sorting is a dependency problem in which completion of
one task depends upon the completion of several other tasks whose
order can vary. Let us understand this concept via an example:
Suppose our task is to reach our School and in order to reach there,
first we need to get dressed. The dependencies to wear clothes is
shown in the below dependency graph. For example you can not wear
shoes before wearing socks.

From the above image you would have already realized that there exist
multiple ways to get dressed, the below image shows some of those
ways.

Can you list all the possible topological ordering of getting dressed for
above dependency graph?
Algorithm for Topological Sorting using DFS:
Here’s a step-by-step algorithm for topological sorting using Depth First
Search (DFS):
Create a graph with n vertices and m-directed edges.
Initialize a stack and a visited array of size n.
For each unvisited vertex in the graph, do the following:
Call the DFS function with the vertex as the parameter.
In the DFS function, mark the vertex as visited and recursively
call the DFS function for all unvisited neighbors of the vertex.
Once all the neighbors have been visited, push the vertex onto
the stack.
After all, vertices have been visited, pop elements from the stack and
append them to the output list until the stack is empty.
The resulting list is the topologically sorted order of the graph.

Illustration Topological Sorting Algorithm:


Below image is an illustration of the above approach:

Overall workflow of topological sorting

Step 1:
We start DFS from node 0 because it has zero incoming Nodes
We push node 0 in the stack and move to next node having
minimum number of adjacent nodes i.e. node 1.
Step 2:
In this step , because there is no adjacent of this node so push the
node 1 in the stack and move to next node.

Step 3:
In this step , We choose node 2 because it has minimum number of
adjacent nodes after 0 and 1 .
We call DFS for node 2 and push all the nodes which comes in
traversal from node 2 in reverse order.
So push 3 then push 2 .

Step 4:
We now call DFS for node 4
Because 0 and 1 already present in the stack so we just push node
4 in the stack and return.
Step 5:
In this step because all the adjacent nodes of 5 is already in the
stack we push node 5 in the stack and return.

Step 6: This is the final step of the Topological sorting in which we


pop all the element from the stack and print it in that order .

Below is the implementation of the above approach:

C++ Java Python C# JavaScript


}

// Function to perform Topological Sort


void topologicalSort(vector<vector<int> >& adj, int V)
{
stack<int> Stack; // Stack to store the result
vector<bool> visited(V, false);

// Call the recursive helper function to store


// Topological Sort starting from all vertices one by
// one
for (int i = 0; i < V; i++) {
if (!visited[i])
topologicalSortUtil(i, adj, visited, Stack);
}

// Print contents of stack


while (!Stack.empty()) {
cout << Stack.top() << " ";
Stack.pop();
}
}

int main()
{

// Number of nodes
int V = 4;

// Edges
vector<vector<int> > edges
= { { 0, 1 }, { 1, 2 }, { 3, 1 }, { 3, 2 } };

// Graph represented as an adjacency list


vector<vector<int> > adj(V);

for (auto i : edges) {


adj[i[0]].push_back(i[1]);
}

cout << "Topological sorting of the graph: ";


topologicalSort(adj, V);

return 0;
}

Output
Topological sorting of the graph: 3 0 1 2

Time Complexity: O(V+E). The above algorithm is simply DFS with an extra
stack. So time complexity is the same as DFS
Auxiliary space: O(V). The extra space is needed for the stack

Topological Sorting Using BFS:


The BFS based algorithm for Topological Sort is called Kahn’s Algorithm.
The Kahn’s algorithm has same time complexity as the DFS based algorithm
discussed above.

Advantages of Topological Sort:


Helps in scheduling tasks or events based on dependencies.
Detects cycles in a directed graph.
Efficient for solving problems with precedence constraints.

Disadvantages of Topological Sort:


Only applicable to directed acyclic graphs (DAGs), not suitable for cyclic
graphs.
May not be unique, multiple valid topological orderings can exist.

Applications of Topological Sort:


Task scheduling and project management.
In software deployment tools like Makefile.
Dependency resolution in package management systems.
Determining the order of compilation in software build systems.
Deadlock detection in operating systems.
Course scheduling in universities.
It is used to find shortest paths in weighted directed acyclic graphs

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