Tag Archives: Adjacency list

Computer Algorithms: Topological Sort Revisited

Introduction

We already know what’s topological sort of a directed acyclic graph. So why do we need a revision of this algorithm? First of all I never mentioned its complexity, thus to understand why we do need a revision let’s get again on the algorithm.

We have a directed acyclic graph (DAG). There are no cycles so we must go for some kind of order putting all the vertices of the graph in such an order, that if there’s a directed edge (u, v), u must precede v in that order.

Topological Sort
 

The process of putting all the vertices of the DAG in such an order is called topological sorting. It’s commonly used in task scheduling or while finding the shortest paths in a DAG.

The algorithm itself is pretty simple to understand and code. We must start from the vertex (vertices) that don’t have predecessors.

Topological Sort - step 1
 
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Computer Algorithms: Graphs and their Representation

Introduction

Although this post is supposed to be about algorithms I’ll cover more on graphs and their computer representation. I consider this very important, because there are lots of problems solved by using graphs and it is important to understand different types of representation.

First of all let’s try to explain what is a graph?

A graph is a specific data structure known in the computer science, that is often used to give a model of different kind of problems where a set of objects relate to each other in some way . For instance, trees are mainly used in order to represent a well-structured hierarchy, but that isn’t enough when modeling objects of the same type. Their relation isn’t always hierarchical! A typical example of graph is a geo map, where we have cities and the roads connecting them. In fact most of the problems solved with graphs relate to finding the shortest or longest path.

Although this is one very typical example actually a huge set of problems is can be solved by using graphs.

Graph & Tree
 

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