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Breadth-first search
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Breadth-first search (BFS) is an algorithm for traversing or

searching tree or graph data structures. It starts at the tree root (or Breadth-first search
some arbitrary node of a graph) and explores the neighbor nodes first,
before moving to the next level neighbours. Compare BFS with the
equivalent, but more memory-efficient Iterative deepening depth-first
search and contrast with depth-first search.

BFS was invented in the late 1950s by E. F. Moore, who used to find
the shortest path out of a maze,[1] and discovered independently by C.
Y. Lee as a wire routing algorithm (published 1961).[2]

Order in which the nodes are expanded

Contents
Class Search algorithm
1 Pseudocode Data structure Graph
2 Analysis Worst case performance
2.1 Time and space complexity Worst case space
2.2 Completeness and optimality complexity
3 Applications
3.1 Testing bipartiteness
4 See also
5 References
6 External links

Pseudocode
Input: A graph G and a vertex v of G Animated example of a breadth-
first search
Output: All vertices reachable from v labeled as discovered

A non-recursive implementation of BFS:

1 procedure BFS(G,v) is
2 let Q be a queue
3 Q.push(v)
4 label v as discovered
5 while Q is not empty
6 v ← Q.pop()
7 for all edges from v to w in G.adjacentEdges(v) do
8 if w is not labeled as discovered
9 Q.push(w)
10 label w as discovered

The non-recursive implementation is similar to depth-first search but differs from it in two ways: it uses a queue instead
of a stack, and it checks whether a vertex has been discovered before pushing the vertex rather than delaying this check
until the vertex is popped from the stack.

Analysis
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Time and space complexity

The time complexity can be expressed as [3] since every

vertex and every edge will be explored in the worst case. Note: may
vary between and , depending on how sparse the input graph
is.

When the number of vertices in the graph is known ahead of time, and
additional data structures are used to determine which vertices have already
been added to the queue, the space complexity can be expressed as
where is the cardinality of the set of vertices. If the graph is represented
by an Adjacency list it occupies [4] space in memory, while
an Adjacency matrix representation occupies .[5]
An example map of Germany with some
Completeness and optimality connections between cities

In the analysis of algorithms, the input to breadth-first search is assumed to

be a finite graph, represented explicitly as an adjacency list or similar
representation. However, in the application of graph traversal methods in
artificial intelligence the input may be an implicit representation of an infinite
graph. In this context, a search method is described as being complete if it is
guaranteed to find a goal state if one exists. Breadth-first search is complete,
but depth-first search is not: when applied to infinite graphs represented
implicitly, it may get lost in parts of the graph that have no goal state and
never return.[6]

A search method is optimal if it is guaranteed to find the best solution that The breadth-first tree obtained when
exists. In other words, it will find the path to the goal state that involves the running BFS on the given map and starting
least number of steps. Breadth-first search is an optimal search method, but in Frankfurt
depth-first search is not[6]

Applications
Breadth-first search can be used to solve many problems in graph theory, for example:

Copying Collection, Cheney's algorithm

Finding the shortest path between two nodes u and v (with path length measured by number of edges)
Testing a graph for bipartiteness
(Reverse) Cuthill–McKee mesh numbering
Ford–Fulkerson method for computing the maximum flow in a flow network
Serialization/Deserialization of a binary tree vs serialization in sorted order, allows the tree to be re-constructed in
an efficient manner.
Construction of the failure function of the Aho-Corasick pattern matcher.

Testing bipartiteness
BFS can be used to test bipartiteness, by starting the search at any vertex and giving alternating labels to the vertices
visited during the search. That is, give label 0 to the starting vertex, 1 to all its neighbours, 0 to those neighbours'
neighbours, and so on. If at any step a vertex has (visited) neighbours with the same label as itself, then the graph is not
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bipartite. If the search ends without such a situation occurring, then the graph is bipartite.

See also
Depth-first search
Iterative deepening depth-first search
Level structure
Lexicographic breadth-first search

References
1. ^ Skiena, Steven (2008). The Algorithm Design Manual. Springer. p. 480. doi:10.1007/978-1-84800-070-4_4
(https://dx.doi.org/10.1007%2F978-1-84800-070-4_4).
2. ^ Leiserson, Charles E.; Schardl, Tao B. (2010). A Work-Efficient Parallel Breadth-First Search Algorithm (or How to Cope
with the Nondeterminism of Reducers) (http://web.mit.edu/neboat/www/papers/LeisersonSc10.pdf). ACM Symp. on Parallelism
in Algorithms and Architectures.
3. ^ Cormen, Thomas H., Charles E. Leiserson, and Ronald L. Rivest. p.597
4. ^ Cormen, Thomas H., Charles E. Leiserson, and Ronald L. Rivest. p.590
5. ^ Cormen, Thomas H., Charles E. Leiserson, and Ronald L. Rivest. p.591
6. ^ a b Coppin, B. (2004). Artificial intelligence illuminated. Jones & Bartlett Learning. pp. 79–80.

Knuth, Donald E. (1997), The Art Of Computer Programming Vol 1. 3rd ed. (http://www-cs-
faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/taocp.html), Boston: Addison-Wesley, ISBN 0-201-89683-4

External links
Breadth-First Explanation and Example (http://www.cse.ohio- Wikimedia Commons has
state.edu/~gurari/course/cis680/cis680Ch14.html#QQ1-46-92) media related to Breadth-
first search.
Open Data Structures - Section 12.3.1 - Bread-First Search
(http://opendatastructures.org/versions/edition-0.1e/ods-
java/12_3_Graph_Traversal.html#SECTION001531000000000000000)

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Categories: Graph algorithms Search algorithms

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