11.

Graphs

Dr. Swati Agarwal

Agenda

1 Graph Search

2 Graph Traversal

3 Depth First Search

4 Breadth First Search

April 12, 2020 Dr. Swati Agarwal 11. Graphs 2/11

Graph Search

One of the most fundamental tasks on graphs is searching a

graph by starting at some source vertex, or set of vertices, and
visiting new vertices by crossing (out) edges until there is
nothing left to search.
We visit every vertex that is reachable from the source exactly
once. This will require recording what vertices have already
been visited so they are not visited a second time.
Graph searching can be used to determine various properties
of graphs:
• whether the graph is connected or whether it is bipartite
• whether a vertex u is reachable from v
• finding the shortest path between vertices u and v

April 12, 2020 Dr. Swati Agarwal 11. Graphs 3/11

Graph Traversal

Problem: Search for a certain node or traverse all nodes in the

graph.
Depth First Search: Once a possible path is found, continue
the search until the end of the path
Breadth First Search: Start several paths at a time, and
advance in each one step at a time

April 12, 2020 Dr. Swati Agarwal 11. Graphs 4/11

Depth First Search

A depth first search (DFS) in a graph G is like wandering in a

labyrinth with a string and a can of paint without getting lost.
We start at vertex s, tying the end of our string to the point
and painting s “visited”. Next we label s as our current vertex
called u.
Now we travel along an arbitrary edge (u, v). If this edge
leads to an already visited vertex, we return to u.
If vertex v is unvisited, we unroll our string and move to v,
paint v “visited”, set v as our current vertex, and repeat the
previous steps.
The process terminates when our backtracking leads us back
to the start index s, and there are no more unexplored edges
incident on s.

April 12, 2020 Dr. Swati Agarwal 11. Graphs 5/11

Algorithm DFS(v,G)
Input: A vertex v in a graph G
Output: A labeling of the edges as ”discovery” edges and ”back”
edges
mark v as a visited vertex
for each edge e incident on v do
if edge e is unexplored then let w be the other endpoint of e
if vertex w is unexplored then label e as a discovery edge
recursively call DFS(w)
else label e as a backedge

April 12, 2020 Dr. Swati Agarwal 11. Graphs 6/11

Algorithm DFS(v,G)
Input: A vertex v in a graph G
Output: A labeling of the edges as ”discovery” edges and ”back”
edges
mark v as a visited vertex
for each edge e incident on v do
if edge e is unexplored then let w be the other endpoint of e
if vertex w is unexplored then label e as a discovery edge
recursively call DFS(w)
else label e as a backedge
Property
DFS(v,G) visits all the vertices and edges in the connected
component of v

April 12, 2020 Dr. Swati Agarwal 11. Graphs 6/11

Analysis of DFS

Setting/getting a vertex/edge label takes O(1) time

Each vertex is labeled twice: once as UNEXPLORED and
once as VISITED
Each edge is labeled twice – once as UNEXPLORED and once
as DISCOVERY or BACK
Method incidentEdges is called once for each vertex
DFS runs in O(n + m) time provided the graph is represented
by the adjacency list structure

April 12, 2020 Dr. Swati Agarwal 11. Graphs 7/11

Breadth First Search

Instead of going as far as possible, BFS tries to search all

paths.
BFS makes use of a queue to store visited (but not dead)
vertices, expanding the path from the earliest visited vertices
The starting vertex s has level 0
In the first round, the string is unrolled the length of one
edge, and all of the nodes that are only one edge away from
the anchor are visited. These edges are placed into level 1
In the second round, all the new edges that can be reached by
unrolling the string 2 edges are visited and placed in level 2.
This continues until every vertex has been assigned a level.
The label of any vertex v corresponds to the length of the
shortest path from s to v.
April 12, 2020 Dr. Swati Agarwal 11. Graphs 8/11
Algorithm BFS(s,G)
Input: A vertex s in a graph G
Output: A labeling of the edges as “discovery” edges and “cross”
edges
initialize container L0 to contain vertex s
i ←0
while Li is not empty do
create container Li+1 to initially be empty
for each vertex v in Li do
if edge e incident on v do
let w be the other endpoint of e
if vertex w is unexplored then
label e as a discovery edge
insert w into Li+1
else label e as a cross edge

April 12, 2020 Dr. Swati Agarwal 11. Graphs 9/11

Analysis of BFS

Setting/getting a vertex/edge label takes O(1) time

Each vertex is labeled twice: once as UNEXPLORED, once as
VISITED
Each edge is labeled twice: once as UNEXPLORED, once as
DISCOVERY or CROSS
Each vertex is inserted once into a sequence Li
Method incidentEdges is called once for each vertex

April 12, 2020 Dr. Swati Agarwal 11. Graphs 10/11

Analysis of BFS

Setting/getting a vertex/edge label takes O(1) time

Each vertex is labeled twice: once as UNEXPLORED, once as
VISITED
Each edge is labeled twice: once as UNEXPLORED, once as
DISCOVERY or CROSS
Each vertex is inserted once into a sequence Li
Method incidentEdges is called once for each vertex
BFS runs in O(n + m) time provided the graph is represented
by the adjacency list structure

April 12, 2020 Dr. Swati Agarwal 11. Graphs 10/11

Applications
We can specialize the BFS or DFS traversal of a graph G to solve
the following problems in O(n + m) time

Compute the connected components of G

Find a simple cycle in G, or report that G is a forest
Given two vertices of G, and a path in G between them with
the minimum number of edges, or report that no such path
exists

April 12, 2020 Dr. Swati Agarwal 11. Graphs 11/11