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Concept
Shortest path problem
Summary
In graph theory, the shortest path problem is the problem of finding a path between two vertices (or nodes) in a graph such that the sum of the weights of its constituent edges is minimized.
The problem of finding the shortest path between two intersections on a road map may be modeled as a special case of the shortest path problem in graphs, where the vertices correspond to intersections and the edges correspond to road segments, each weighted by the length of the segment.
The shortest path problem can be defined for graphs whether undirected, directed, or mixed.
It is defined here for undirected graphs; for directed graphs the definition of path
requires that consecutive vertices be connected by an appropriate directed edge.
Two vertices are adjacent when they are both incident to a common edge.
A path in an undirected graph is a sequence of vertices
such that is adjacent to for .
Such a path is called a path of length
from to .
(The are variables; their numbering here relates to their position in the sequence and needs not to relate to any canonical labeling of the vertices.)
Let be the edge incident to both and . Given a real-valued weight function , and an undirected (simple) graph , the shortest path from to is the path (where and ) that over all possible minimizes the sum When each edge in the graph has unit weight or , this is equivalent to finding the path with fewest edges.
The problem is also sometimes called the single-pair shortest path problem, to distinguish it from the following variations:
The single-source shortest path problem, in which we have to find shortest paths from a source vertex v to all other vertices in the graph.
The single-destination shortest path problem, in which we have to find shortest paths from all vertices in the directed graph to a single destination vertex v. This can be reduced to the single-source shortest path problem by reversing the arcs in the directed graph.
The all-pairs shortest path problem, in which we have to find shortest paths between every pair of vertices v, v' in the graph.
Official source
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