Why use bfs

Let me know whether my understanding is wrong. For example,when we want to find the shortest path. Because Breadth-First Searches use a queue, not a stack, to keep track of what nodes are processed, backtracking is not provided with BFS.

When tree width is very large and depth is low use DFS as recursion stack will not overflow. Use BFS when width is low and depth is very large to traverse the tree. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Collectives on Stack Overflow. Learn more. Asked 11 years, 3 months ago. Active 1 year, 1 month ago. Viewed k times. Improve this question. River 7, 12 12 gold badges 49 49 silver badges 63 63 bronze badges. Parth Parth 4, 3 3 gold badges 14 14 silver badges 4 4 bronze badges.

Similar question on Computer Science : graph searching: Breadth-first vs. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. If solutions are frequent but located deep in the tree, BFS could be impractical. But these are just rules of thumb; you'll probably need to experiment. Improve this answer. AFAIK recursion generally needs more memory than iteration. MarekMarczak I don't quite see what you want to say. Recursion vs. Iteration is a whole separate topic. Just another case that came to mind: BFS is useful necessary in a case where a graph is "infinite".

Like say, a chess board that extends to infinity in all directions. DFS will never return. BFS is guaranteed to find what it's searching for IF the condition is satisfiable. On a lighter note, What if the degree of nodes is also infinite in the infinite graph. Show 5 more comments. Depth-first Search Depth-first searches are often used in simulations of games and game-like situations in the real world. Breadth-first search The breadth-first search has an interesting property: It first finds all the vertices that are one edge away from the starting point, then all the vertices that are two edges away, and so on.

The numbers represent the order in which the nodes are accessed in a BFS: In a depth first search, you start at the root, and follow one of the branches of the tree as far as possible until either the node you are looking for is found or you hit a leaf node a node with no children. Kanagavelu Sugumar Kanagavelu Sugumar What is "post order traversal in binary tree"?

Preorder Traversal - We start from the root node and search the tree vertically top to bottom , traversing from left to right. In-order Traversal - Start from the leftmost node and move to the right nodes traversing from top to bottom. If you traverse the example tree in this article using Preorder Traversal, the tree nodes will be traversed in the following order:. Join over 25, software developers who are landing their dream jobs by finally mastering technical coding interviews.

Get hundreds of visual, bite-sized coding interview problems delivered as a daily newsletter, for free. Already registered? Back to course sections. Mark As Completed Discussion. Jump To. If we know the solution is not that far from the source vertex, use BFS. Rate this post. Average rating 4. Vote count: No votes so far! Be the first to rate this post.

Primary Primary. Skip to content. Definition The Depth—first search DFS algorithm starts at the root of the tree or some arbitrary node for a graph and explored as far as possible along each branch before backtracking.

Examples The following graph shows the order in which the nodes are discovered in DFS: The following graph shows the order in which the nodes are discovered in BFS: 3. Finding the bridges of a graph.

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