Applications of DFS and BFS in Data Structures

Here we will see what are the different applications of DFS and BFS algorithms of a graph?

The DFS or Depth First Search is used in different places. Some common uses are −

• If we perform DFS on unweighted graph, then it will create minimum spanning tree for all pair shortest path tree
• We can detect cycles in a graph using DFS. If we get one back-edge during BFS, then there must be one cycle.
• Using DFS we can find path between two given vertices u and v.
• We can perform topological sorting is used to scheduling jobs from given dependencies among jobs. Topological sorting can be done using DFS algorithm.
• Using DFS, we can find strongly connected components of a graph. If there is a path from each vertex to every other vertex, that is strongly connected.

Like DFS, the BFS (Breadth First Search) is also used in different situations. These are like below −

• In peer-to-peer network like bit-torrent, BFS is used to find all neighbor nodes
• Search engine crawlers are used BFS to build index. Starting from source page, it finds all links in it to get new pages
• Using GPS navigation system BFS is used to find neighboring places.
• In networking, when we want to broadcast some packets, we use the BFS algorithm.
• Path finding algorithm is based on BFS or DFS.
• BFS is used in Ford-Fulkerson algorithm to find maximum flow in a network.