Cycles in graphs

Abstract

This chapter looks at a special application of depth-first search in order to find cycles in labyrinths, street networks, or networks of social relationships. Sometimes it is very important to find cycles, for example in order to resolve deadlocks where people or jobs wait on each other in a cyclic fashion so that no one can advance. Surprisingly, there is a very simple and elegant way of detecting all cycles in a network. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.