Along with the Kruskal’s minimum spanning tree algorithm, there’s another general algorithm that solves the problem. The algorithm of Prim.

As we already know the algorithm of Kruskal works in a pretty natural and logical way. Since we’re trying to build a MST, which is naturally build by the minimal edges of the graph (G), we sort them in a non-descending order and we start building the tree.

During the whole process of building the final minimum spanning tree Kruskal’s algorithm keeps a forest of trees. The number of trees in that forest decreases on each step and finally we get the minimum weight spanning tree.

A key point in the Kruskal’s approach is the way we get the “next” edge from G that should be added to one of the trees of the forest (or to connect two trees from the forest). The only thing we should be aware of is to choose an edge that’s connecting two vertices – u and v and these two shouldn’t be in the same tree. That’s all.

An important feature of the Kruskal’s algorithm is that it builds the MST just by sorting the edges by their weight and doesn’t care about a particular starting vertex.

In the same time there’s another algorithm that builds a MST – the algorithm of Prim designed by Robert Prim in 1957.

Overview

The idea behind the Prim’s algorithm is rather different from Kruskal’s approach. During the process of building the MST this algorithm keeps a single tree, which is finally sub-tree of the final minimum weight spanning tree.

On each step we chose an edge which we add to the growing tree that finally forms the MST.

It is somehow unnatural approach! We start from a given vertex and initially we don’t choose the lightest edge. Thus during the whole process the tree grows, but outside the tree (T) there might be edges that are lighter than those in the tree (i.e. the edge (5, 1) from the tree above is lighter than (2, 5) but (2, 5) is added to the growing tree before the edge (5, 1)).

Compared to the Kruskal’s algorithm this time everything seems to be really unnatural. How we should be sure the final tree (T) will be a minimum spanning tree since we don’t get the lightest edge on each step?

Actually we are sure that the final tree is a MST because of another obvious feature of the minimum spanning trees. They should “connect” all the vertices of G, thus somehow at least one edge reaching each vertex will appear in the MST. Thus we shouldn’t care where do we start, the only important thing is to choose the lightest edge that’s visible so far.

This algorithm looks much like Dijkstra’s shortest path in a graph, because we start from a vertex, we push all the edges starting from this node to a priority queue and we chose the lightest edge. Going to the next node connected by this edge we append to the queue all the edges that aren’t in the queue.

That way the queue grows and we get always the lightest edge – thus forming a priority queue.

Now let’s summarize the algorithm of Prim

Pseudo Code

As an initial input we have the graph (G) and a starting vertex (s).

1.  Make a queue (Q) with all the vertices of G (V);
2.  For each member of Q set the priority to INFINITY;
3.  Only for the starting vertex (s) set the priority to 0;
4.  The parent of (s) should be NULL;
5.  While Q isn’t empty
6.     Get the minimum from Q – let’s say (u); (priority queue);
7.     For each adjacent vertex to (v) to (u)
8.        If (v) is in Q and weight of (u, v) < priority of (v) then
9.           The parent of (v) is set to be (u)
10.          The priority of (v) is the weight of (u, v)

Indeed it looks much like the Dijkstra’s algorithm.

Code

Here’s a PHP implementation of the algorithm of Prim, which directly follows the pseudo code.

// Prim's algorithm

define('INFINITY', 100000000);

// the graph
$G = array(
    0 => array( 0,  4,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  8),
    1 => array( 4,  0,  8,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  11),
    2 => array( 0,  8,  0,  7,  0,  4,  2,  0,  0),
    3 => array( 0,  0,  7,  0,  9,  14,  0,  0,  0),
    4 => array( 0,  0,  0,  9,  0,  10,  0,  0,  0),
    5 => array( 0,  0,  4,  14,  10,  0,  0,  2,  0),
    6 => array( 0,  0,  2,  0,  0,  0,  0,  6,  7),
    7 => array( 0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  2,  6,  0,  1),
    8 => array( 8,  11,  0,  0,  0,  0,  7,  1,  0),
);

function prim(&$graph, $start)
{
    $q = array(); // queue
    $p = array(); // parent
    
    foreach (array_keys($graph) as $k) {
        $q[$k] = INFINITY;
    }
    
    $q[$start] = 0;
    $p[$start] = NULL;
    
    asort($q);
    
    while ($q) {
        // get the minimum value
        $keys = array_keys($q);
        $u = $keys[0];
        
        foreach ($graph[$u] as $v => $weight) {
            if ($weight > 0 && in_array($v, $keys) && $weight < $q[$v]) {
                $p[$v] = $u;
                $q[$v] = $weight;
            }
        }
        
        unset($q[$u]);
        asort($q);
    }
    
    return $p;
}

prim($G, 5);

History

It’s curious to say that the algorithm developed by Robert Prim isn’t developed by him. It’s considered that a Czech mathematician Vojtech Jarnik discovered back in 1930. However now we know this algorithm as the algorithm of Prim, which independently discovered it in 1957 as I said above, and finally Edsger Dijkstra described it in 1959. That’s why his algorithm on finding the single-source shortest paths in a graph looks so much to this algorithm. Perhaps by finding this algorithm on minimum spanning tree Dijkstra discovered how we can find the shortest paths to all vertices using a priority queue. Indeed the paths to all other vertices use the edges of the minimum spanning tree.

Just because Jarnik found and described this algorithm 27 years earlier than Robert Prim, today it’s more convenient to call this algorithm the Prim-Jarnik algorithm.

One of the two main algorithms in finding the minimum spanning tree algorithms is the algorithm of Kruskal. Before getting into the details, let’s get back to the principles of the minimum spanning tree.

We have a weighted graph and of all spanning trees we’d like to find the one with minimal weight. As an example on the picture above you see a spanning tree (T) on the graph (G), but that isn’t the minimum weight spanning tree!

We can think of a group of islands and the possible connections of bridges connecting them. Of course building bridges is expensive and time consuming, so we must be aware of what kind of bridges we want to build. Nevertheless there is an important question, what’s the minimum price we’d like to pay to build such set of bridges connecting all the islands.

Thus we practically need to build a minimum spanning tree, where the vertices will be the islands, while the edges will be the possible bridges between them. Every possible bridge has a weight (the price or the time we need to build it, etc.).

This scenario is only one of possible use cases of where minimum spanning trees can be used in practice.

The two main approaches – the Kruskal’s and the Prim’s algorithms however differ.

Overview

The algorithm of Kruskal starts by initializing a set of |V| trees.

During the process of building the final spanning tree we keep a forest. Obviously we start with a forest with |V| trees, where each tree is a single node tree.

On some point we have a forest of “k” trees which are all a sub-trees of the minimum spanning tree.

Finally one step before building the final MST we have two trees and we connect them with the less weighted edge left that connects them.

It’s important to note that during the process of building the tree we sort the edges in ascending order by their weight.

Than we start getting edges and check whether their ends (the two vertices making the edge) belong to a different sub-trees.

Pseudo Code

1. T (the final spanning tree) is defined to be the empty set;
2. For each vertex v of G, make the empty set out of v;
3. Sort the edges of G in ascending (non-decreasing) order;
4. For each edge (u, v) from the sored list of step 3.
      If u and v belong to different sets
         Add (u,v) to T;
         Get together u and v in one single set;
5. Return T

A great feature about the Kruskal’s algorithm is that it also work on disconnected graphs.

History

Kruskal’s algorithm is named after Joseph Kruskal, who wasn’t only computer scientist, but also prominent mathematician and statistician. Although he is best known for its algorithm for computing the minimum spanning tree, described in this post, he’s also known with his work as a statistician and his contribution to the formulation of multidimensional scaling.

Kruskal also explored the Indo-European languages contributing the studies of the linguistics along with other scientists. His “Indo-European Lexicographical List” (http://www.wordgumbo.com/ie/cmp/) is still widely used.

The binary search tree is a very useful data structure, where searching can be significantly faster than searching into a linked list. However in some cases searching into a binary tree can be as slow as searching into a linked list and this mainly depends on the input sequence. Indeed in case the input is sorted the binary tree will seem much like a linked list and the search will be slow.

To overcome this we must change a bit the data structure in order to stay well balanced. It’s intuitively clear that the searching process will be better if the tree is well branched. This is when finding an item will become faster with minimal effort.

Since we know how to construct a binary search tree the only thing left is to keep it balanced. Obviously we will need to re-balance the tree on each insert and delete, which will make this data structure more difficult to maintain compared to non-balanced search trees, but searching into it will be significantly faster.

Overview

In order to balance a tree we can go for the very basic and intuitive approach. First let’s take a look of one non-balanced tree.

Compared to the balanced tree on the right from the image above with the same items we see that the root is approximately equal to its middle item. I.e. 4 is the middle item of the sequence [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]!

If we take a look of the sequence [2 3 4], clearly by building a binary tree it will look like a linked list. However if we choose the middle item for a root – we’ll easy build a balanced tree. So the only thing to do is to get the middle item out of a list.

We now see that building a balanced binary tree out of a sorted linked list isn’t that difficult. In the other hand, as I said above, on each insert we’ll have to rebalance the tree. You can think of the tree out of the values [1,2,3,4,5] and the same tree after inserting [44,45,46,47,48]. Clearly the root of the resulting tree will no longer be 3.

So we need to implement the re-balancing in three basic operations. First we need to build a linked list out of a balanced binary tree. On the second place we’ll have to find the middle item and on the third place we’ll have to build again a balanced search tree.

Hopefully the first two tasks are easy to implement, because making out a sorted list out of a binary search tree is very easy. We need just to walk through the tree from left-root-right recursively. Because smaller items are in the left sub-tree and greater items are on the right we’re sure that the resulting list will be sorted. Then finding the middle item is as easy as finding the middle index of an array know its length.

Balancing Optimization

Of course the main problem of re-balancing a tree on each insert/delete is that this operations will be slow and soon or later we’ll have problems. That can happen if we change often our data structure. That’s why we should think of some optimization.

Normally we insert and re-balance on each step, which is slow. In the other hand we can do bulk insert forgetting about the re-balancing for a while. Only after the inserts are done we can go for re-balancing the entire tree.

The same approach we can use with bulk delete. We can just set to NIL the items we want to delete, but we can keep them in memory for a while. Thus the search will stay relatively fast without rebalancing the tree. However this approach can be used carefully because we’ll keep some data in the memory without actually using it.

Implementation

Implementing balanced binary trees is more difficult than just implementing binary search trees. Here’s an example in PHP.

class Node
{
	protected   $_parent = null;
	protected   $_left = null;
	protected   $_right = null;
	protected   $_key;
    protected   $_data = null;
	
    /**
     * @param int $key
     * @param mixed $data 
     */
	public function __construct($key, $data)
	{
		$this->_key = $key;
        $this->_data = $data;
	}
    
    /**
     * Empty the node by keeping up the key, but
     * setting up the data to NULL 
     */
    public function doEmpty() 
    {
        $this->_data = null;
    }
	
    /**
     * Print the key
     * 
     * @return string
     */
	public function __toString()
	{
		return 'First name: ' . $this->_data['f_name']
                . '
'
                . 'Last name: ' . $this->_data['l_name']
                . '
' 
                . 'Birthday: ' . $this->_data['b_day'];
	}
    
    public function &getParent() { return $this->_parent; }
    public function setParent($parent) { $this->_parent = $parent; }
    
    public function &getLeft() { return $this->_left; }
    public function setLeft($left) { $this->_left = $left; }
    
    public function &getRight() { return $this->_right; }
    public function setRight($right) { $this->_right = $right; }
    
    public function &getKey() { return $this->_key; }
    public function setKey($key) { $this->_key = $key; }
    
    public function &getData() { return $this->_data; }
    public function setData($data) { $this->_data = $data; }
}

class BalancedBinaryTree
{
    /**
     * Reference to the root tree
     * 
     * @var Node 
     */
	protected $_root = null;
	
    /**
     * @param type $new
     * @param type $node
     * @return type 
     */
	protected function _insert($new, &$root)
	{
        // in case the tree is empty
        // make the new node the root of
        // the tree
		if ($root == null) {
			$root = $new;
			return;
		}
		
		if ($new->getKey() <= $root->getKey()) {
			if ($root->getLeft() == null) {
				$root->setLeft($new);
				$new->setParent($root);
			} else {
				$this->_insert($new, $root->getLeft());
			}
		} else {
			if ($root->getRight() == null) {
				$root->setRight($new);
				$new->setParent($root);
			} else {
				$this->_insert($new, $root->getRight());
			}
		}		
	}
	
    /**
     * FALSE on not found
     * 
     * @param string $firstName
     * @param BalancedBinaryTree $tree
     * @return boolean 
     */
	protected function _search($firstName, &$tree)
	{
        if ($tree == null) {
            return FALSE;
        }

        $data = $tree->getData();
		
        if ($firstName == $data['f_name']) {
			return $tree;
		}
        
        // search the left sub-tree
        return $this->_search($firstName, $tree->getLeft())
                . $this->_search($firstName, $tree->getRight());
	}
    
    /**
     *
     * @param int $key
     * @param Node $tree
     * @return FALSE or Node 
     */
    protected function _searchByKey($key, &$tree)
    {
        if ($tree == null) {
            return FALSE;
        }
        
        if ($tree->getKey() == $key) {
            return $tree;
        } else if ($tree->getKey() > $key) {
            return $this->_searchByKey($key, $tree->getLeft());
        } else {
            return $this->_searchByKey($key, $tree->getRight());
        }
    }
    
    /**
     * Returns a list out of the tree by emptying the tree. 
     * In other way the tree and the list will allocate memory
     * 
     * @param BalancedBinaryTree $tree 
     */
    protected function _leftRootRight($tree)
    {
        if ($tree == null) {
            return array();
        }
        
        return array_merge(
                $this->_leftRootRight($tree->getLeft()),
                array(array('key' => $tree->getKey(), 'data' => $tree->getData())),
                $this->_leftRootRight($tree->getRight()));
    }
    
    public function _balance($list)
    {
        if (empty($list)) {
            return;
        }
        
        // split the list
        $chunks = array_chunk($list, ceil(count($list) / 2));
        $mid = array_pop($chunks[0]);
        
        $node = new Node($mid['key'], $mid['data']);
        $this->insert($node);
        
        $this->_balance($chunks[0]);
        if (isset($chunks[1]))
            $this->_balance($chunks[1]);
    }
    
    /**
     * Balance a binary search tree 
     */
    public function balance()
    {
        $list = array();
        // make a list out of the tree
        $list = $this->_leftRootRight($this->_root);
        
        // find the medium! Because the list is ordered
        // we can find the middle element in various ways
        $chunks = array_chunk($list, ceil(count($list) / 2));
        $mid = array_pop($chunks[0]);
        
        // empty the tree
        $this->_root = null;
        
        // inser the root
        $node = new Node($mid['key'], $mid['data']);
        $this->insert($node);
        
        $this->_balance($chunks[0]);
        $this->_balance($chunks[1]);
    }
	
    /**
     * Insert a new item into the tree
     * 
     * @param type $node 
     */
	public function insert($newNode)
	{
		$this->_insert($newNode, $this->_root);
	}
	
    /**
     * Search by item key
     * 
     * @param int $key
     * @return Node or FALSE
     */
    public function searchByKey($key)
    {
        return $this->_searchByKey($key, $this->_root);
    }
    
    /**
     * @param BalancedBinary $tree
     * @return string 
     */
    protected function _print($tree)
    {
        if ($tree == null) { return ''; }
        
        return $this->_print($tree->getLeft()) . ' ' 
                . $tree->getKey() . ' ' 
                . $this->_print($tree->getRight());
    }
    
    /**
     * Print the tree from left through the root and the right 
     */
    public function __toString()
    {
        if ($this->_root == null) {
            return 'The tree is empty!';
        }

        return $this->_print($this->_root->getLeft()) . ' '
                . $this->_root->getKey() . ' '
                . $this->_print($this->_root->getRight());
    }
}

$a = new Node(90, array(
    'f_name' => 'W.A.',
    'l_name' => 'Mozart',
    'b_day' => '1756-01-27',
));

$b = new Node(100, array(
    'f_name' => 'John',
    'l_name' => 'Smith',
    'b_day' => '23.05.2039',
));

$c = new Node(80, array(
    'f_name' => 'Sarah',
    'l_name' => 'Johnnes',
    'b_day' => 'tomorrow',
));

$d = new Node(60, array(
    'f_name' => 'Ludwig Van',
    'l_name' => 'Beethoven',
    'b_day' => '1770-12-17',
));

$e = new Node(70, array(
    'f_name' => 'Barbara',
    'l_name' => 'Stefanel',
    'b_day' => 'today',
));

$t = new BalancedBinaryTree();

$t->insert($a);
$t->insert($b);
$t->insert($c);
$t->insert($d);
$t->insert($e);

echo $t;

echo $t->searchByKey(70);

$t->balance();

echo $t->searchByKey(70);

Complexity of Searching

Compared to non-balanced binary search trees we’re sure that searching into a balanced trees is quick enough. The maximum height of the tree is log(n) so the worst-case searching is O(log(n)).

Application

Searching into a balanced binary tree is fast. What is more important is that we’re sure that in the worst-case scenario the search is O(log(n)). The only problem is that keeping a tree balanced is a slow operation that consumes too much resources and must be performed carefully.

Constructing a linked list is a fairly simple task. Linked lists are a linear structure and the items are located one after another, each pointing to its predecessor and its successor. Almost every operation is easy to code in few lines and doesn’t require advanced skills. Operations like insert, delete, etc. over linked lists are performed in a linear time. Of course on small data sets this works fine, but as the data grows these operations, especially the search operation becomes too slow.

Indeed searching in a linked list has a linear complexity and in the worst case we must go through the entire list in order to find the desired element. The worst case is when the item doesn’t belong to the list and we must check every single item of the list even the last one without success. This approach seems much like the sequential search over arrays. Of course this is bad when we talk about large data sets.

In terms of arrays, we could perform binary search and go directly in the middle of the array, then jump back or forward. That is because we can access array items directly using their index. However as we saw the linked lists unlike arrays can’t benefit of a direct access and we must go item by item.

Because of this natural problem of linked lists searching is slow and obviously we can’t make it better. The only way to improve searching over dynamic data structures is to use different data structure.

The tree is a data structure where each item, except of keeping some data, keeps a reference (pointer) to its children and its parent.

Of course if the item doesn’t have children, they are NIL, then this is considered a leaf in the tree terminology. In the other hand if the item doesn’t have parent item it is considered the root.

If there is no item in the tree the tree is considered empty.

In these terms only the root has no parent, and each item can have as many children as possible. Here are some trees in form of a diagrams.

If we’re looking at the root of the tree we can assume there are two sub-trees – one left and one right. However if we isolate only one of these sub-trees we can again think of it as a tree and assume that it has one left and one right sub-trees and go recursively with this definition.

Overview

A binary tree is a tree where each item can have at most two children.

Binary trees are especially important because they can contain ordered data in a specific manner. Building a binary tree isn’t difficult at all and it’s very similar to building a linked list.
However a binary tree isn’t more successful in searching than any other tree or data structure. If the items aren’t placed in a specific order we must go through the entire tree in order to find the searched item. This isn’t a great optimization, so we must put an order in it to improve the searching process.

Binary Search Tree

The binary search tree is a specific kind of binary tree, where the each item keeps greater elements on the right, while the smaller items are on the left.

Constructing a binary search tree is easy, because we can go for inserting each item only by comparing it with the root and decide where to go (left or right) based on its value.

Implementation

The following code in PHP describes the basic principles of a binary search tree.

class Node
{
	public $parent = null;
	public $left = null;
	public $right = null;
	public $data = null;
	
	public function __construct($data)
	{
		$this->data = $data;
	}
	
	public function __toString()
	{
		return $this->data;
	}
}

class BinaryTree
{
	protected $_root = null;
	
	protected function _insert(&$new, &$node)
	{
		if ($node == null) {
			$node = $new;
			return;
		}
		
		if ($new->data <= $node->data) {
			if ($node->left == null) {
				$node->left = $new;
				$new->parent = $node;
			} else {
				$this->_insert($new, $node->left);
			}
		} else {
			if ($node->right == null) {
				$node->right = $new;
				$new->parent = $node;
			} else {
				$this->_insert($new, $node->right);
			}
		}		
	}
	
	protected function _search(&$target, &$node)
	{
		if ($target == $node) {
			return 1;
		} else if ($target->data > $node->data && isset($node->right)) {
			return $this->_search($target, $node->right);
		} else if ($target->data <= $node->data && isset($node->left)) {
			return $this->_search($target, $node->left);
		}
		
		return 0;
	}
	
	public function insert($node)
	{
		$this->_insert($node, $this->_root);
	}
	
	public function search($item) 
	{
		return $this->_search($item, $this->_root);
	}
}

$a = new Node(3);
$b = new Node(2);
$c = new Node(4);
$d = new Node(7);
$e = new Node(6);

$t = new BinaryTree();

$t->insert($a);
$t->insert($b);
$t->insert($c);
$t->insert($d);
$t->insert($e);

echo $t->search($e);

Search Complexity

Searching in binary search trees is supposed to be faster than searching into linked list. However the searching process in a BST can be very fast, but also can be as slow as on linked list. That is because depending on the input of items they can be placed only on the one side of the root.

That makes the worst-case searching as slow as on linked list which is linear O(n). However if the tree is somehow balanced we can search very quickly with O(log(n)) time.

Further Optimization

We now see how ineffective binary search trees can be, so the only thing we must care is how to keep them balanced, so the search will be faster. The answer is to maintain (during insertion) a balanced binary search tree, which is another very handy data structure.

A balanced binary search tree, or only balanced tree, is a data structure where the height of left and the right sub-trees can vary by one level at most.

Application

Binary search trees are easy to build and maintain. The great thing is that if the data is well balanced they can be very useful for searching. The only problem is that these structures can be ineffective depending on the insertion order. However if we are somehow sure that the items aren’t ordered on the input, we may expect some optimized searching compared to a linked list. Compared to balanced binary search trees, BST require much less time to build and maintain (insert, delete).

Trees are very useful when working with graphs. Actually one of the very common tasks is walking through the entire tree, which can be done in several ways. First we can go to the left sub-tree, then the root and then the right sub-tree. Or right-root-left. Or root-left-right.

However we can go in depth first often called depth-first-search or a breadth-first-search.

These two methods are designed to walk through the items in a specific order, which is very handy for some specific tasks – at least each tree is also a graph.

No, it works but maybe the problem is you current Java version. The Google Closure Compiler requires 1.6 and most commonly you’re runing on 1.5 therefore it produces errors. It was my problem when I tried to run the application. At that moment it produced these lines of errors:

java -jar compiler.jar --help

Exception in thread “main” java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: Bad version number in .class file
at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass1(Native Method)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass(ClassLoader.java:676)
at java.security.SecureClassLoader.defineClass(SecureClassLoader.java:124)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.defineClass(URLClassLoader.java:260)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.access$100(URLClassLoader.java:56)
at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:195)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:188)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:317)
at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launcher.java:280)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:252)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClassInternal(ClassLoader.java:375)

Just update or switch your current Java version to 1.6 and everything will be fine!