Breadth-first search
In computer science, breadth-first search (BFS) is a method used for traversing a graph. It starts at any item you want to use as a starting position in a graph, and explores all of the neighbor items at the present depth before to moving on to the items at the next depth level. A breadth-first search done on a tree (data structure) is called a level-order traversal.
Implementation[change | change source]
void breadthFirstSearch(Item root) {
Queue q = new Queue();
root.found = true;
q.enqueue(item);
while (!q.isEmpty()) {
Item v = q.dequeue();
for (Item neighbor : v.neighbors()) {
if (!neighbor.found) {
neighbor.found = true;
q.enqueue(neighbor);
}
}
}
}
Usage[change | change source]
Though they have usage in a variety of disciplines, breadth first search algorithms are most often associated with finding the shortest distance between two points, such as on a map.