What is Breadth-First Search Algorithm?
Breadth-first search algorithms have the following characteristics:
Firstly, breadth-first search is a search algorithm that starts with a node (a point in the tree) and then expands outward. It will visit all the nodes connected to that node before moving on to another one.
Secondly, breadth-first searches are best for looking at a problem as being made up of different layers or trees. In other words, they are good at exploring large spaces and determining which areas of the space are relatively close to each other.
Thirdly, breadth-first searches start by expanding as far as possible in a single direction before branching out into other directions.
How Does Breadth-First Search Work?
Breadth-first search is a systematic exploration technique. It starts with the first item on a list and then searches through the items in order. With each new item, it expands the search to include all previously unvisited items.
The algorithm starts with the first item on its list and then searches through the items in order. With each new item, it expands its search to include all previously unvisited items.
Breadth-first search is often faster than depth-first search because it only explores one path at a time, instead of exploring two at once (like depth-first)
What is Depth First Search Algorithm?
Depth-first search is an algorithm which searches a tree data structure by traversing as far as possible along each branch before backtracking.
Depth-first search starts from the root node, explores the immediate child nodes and then moves to their children and so on. It does not explore the branches that it has already partly explored. It can find a path to any node from the current node in a finite number of steps, but it may take a very long time to complete if there are many layers of nodes or if many nodes have very deep subtrees. So depth-first search is not guaranteed to find the path with the shortest total distance; it simply finds one for which we know how far we have gone at every point along its length.
How Does Depth First Search Work?
Depth-limited search, also known as depth first search, is a method used in computer science to traverse a graph. The algorithm starts with the first vertex and selects the neighbor that leads to a new vertex that is not yet processed. Then it continues with these new vertices and their neighbors until there are no more new vertices left or all of the options have been tried.
Depth-first search can be illustrated by following an example graph:
A -> B -> C -> D -> E -> F -> G
The algorithm will start at A and continue by going to B, C, D, E and F and then will end at G.
Advantage of Breadth-First Search over Depth First Algorithm
Breadth-first search is a technique to traverse the search space that is more flexible than depth first search.
Depth-first search starts by searching the adjacent nodes of the current node in order to find an optimum solution for the current node. The algorithm starts with all of the nodes as unvisited and then visits them in order. Breadth-first search, on the other hand, starts with all of the nodes as unvisited and then searches adjacent nodes before moving away from them.
Breadth-first search is advantageous because it provides a better way to explore an unknown space as it allows one to get a better idea of what they are looking for at a given point in time.
A lot of people always ask about dfs vs bfs when in reality the best one to use differs according to the needs of the software engineers.