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Animated example of a breadth-first search. Black: explored, grey: queued to be explored later on BFS on Maze-solving algorithm Top part of Tic-tac-toe game tree. Breadth-first search (BFS) is an algorithm for searching a tree data structure for a node that satisfies a given property.
A depth-first search (DFS) is an algorithm for traversing a finite graph. DFS visits the child vertices before visiting the sibling vertices; that is, it traverses the depth of any particular path before exploring its breadth. A stack (often the program's call stack via recursion) is generally used when implementing the algorithm.
The breadth-first-search algorithm is a way to explore the vertices of a graph layer by layer. It is a basic algorithm in graph theory which can be used as a part of other graph algorithms. For instance, BFS is used by Dinic's algorithm to find maximum flow in a graph.
Specific applications of search algorithms include: Problems in combinatorial optimization, such as: . The vehicle routing problem, a form of shortest path problem; The knapsack problem: Given a set of items, each with a weight and a value, determine the number of each item to include in a collection so that the total weight is less than or equal to a given limit and the total value is as ...
By contrast, a breadth-first search will never reach the grandchildren, as it seeks to exhaust the children first. A more sophisticated analysis of running time can be given via infinite ordinal numbers ; for example, the breadth-first search of the depth 2 tree above will take ω ·2 steps: ω for the first level, and then another ω for the ...
The breadth-first search starts at , and the shortest distance () of each vertex from is recorded, dividing the graph into discrete layers. Additionally, each vertex v {\displaystyle v} keeps track of the set of vertices which in the preceding layer which point to it, p ( v ) {\displaystyle p(v)} .
An and–or tree specifies only the search space for solving a problem. Different search strategies for searching the space are possible. These include searching the tree depth-first, breadth-first, or best-first using some measure of desirability of solutions. The search strategy can be sequential, searching or generating one node at a time ...
The problem of determining whether two vertices in a graph are connected can be solved efficiently using a search algorithm, such as breadth-first search. More generally, it is easy to determine computationally whether a graph is connected (for example, by using a disjoint-set data structure ), or to count the number of connected components.