breadth first or depth first search

Question

I know how this algorithm works, but cant decide when to use which algorithm ?

Are there some guidelines, where one better perform than other or any considerations ?

Answer 1

If you want to find a solution with the shortest number of steps or if your tree has infinite height (or very large) you should use breadth first.

If you have a finite tree and want to traverse all possible solutions using the smallest amount of memory then you should use depth first.

If you are searching for the best chess move to play you could use iterative deepening which is a combination of both.

IDDFS combines depth-first search's space-efficiency and breadth-first search's completeness (when the branching factor is finite).