A linear time implementation of SPQR-trees

Abstract

The data structure SPQR-tree represents the decomposition of a biconnected graph with respect to its triconnected components. SPQR-trees have been introduced by Di Battista and Tamassia [8] and, since then, became quite important in field of graph algorithms. Theoretical papers using SPQR-trees claim that they can be implemented in linear time using a modification of the algorithm by Hopcroft and Tarjan [15] for decomposing a graph into its triconnected components. So far no correct linear time implementation of either triconnectivity decomposition or SPQR-trees is known to us. Here, we show the incorrectness of the Hopcroft and Tarjan algorithm [15], and correct the faulty parts. We describe the relationship between SPQR-trees and triconnected components and apply the resulting algorithm to the computation of SPQR-trees. Our implementation is publically available in AGD [1].