EDIT: See simon’s answer, where he fixed the formula presented here. Actually there is an O(1) formula This is an image that I’ve made to visualize it ( Squares a knight can reach on Nth move are painted with same color ). Can you notice the pattern here? Although we can see the pattern, it … Read more
Technically, Breadth-first search (BFS) by itself does not let you find the shortest path, simply because BFS is not looking for a shortest path: BFS describes a strategy for searching a graph, but it does not say that you must search for anything in particular. Dijkstra’s algorithm adapts BFS to let you find single-source shortest … Read more
As a caveat, remember that there can be exponentially many shortest paths between two nodes in a graph. Any algorithm for this will potentially take exponential time. That said, there are a few relatively straightforward algorithms that can find all the paths. Here’s two. BFS + Reverse DFS When running a breadth-first search over a … Read more
The algorithm you have suggested will indeed find the shortest path in this graph, but not all graphs in general. For example, consider this graph: Let’s trace through the execution of your algorithm. First, you set d(A) to 0 and the other distances to ∞. You then expand out node A, setting d(B) to 1, … Read more
Recall that in Dijkstra’s algorithm, once a vertex is marked as “closed” (and out of the open set) – the algorithm found the shortest path to it, and will never have to develop this node again – it assumes the path developed to this path is the shortest. But with negative weights – it might … Read more