How do I check if a directed graph is acyclic?

Question

How do I check if a directed graph is acyclic? And how is the algorithm called? I would appreciate a reference.

Answer 1

Solution1： Kahn algorithm to check cycle. Main idea: Maintain a queue where node with zero in-degree will be added into queue. Then peel off node one by one until queue is empty. Check if any node's in-edges are existed.

Solution2: Tarjan algorithm to check Strong connected component.

Solution3: DFS. Use integer array to tag current status of node: i.e. 0 --means this node hasn't been visited before. -1 -- means this node has been visited, and its children nodes are being visited. 1 -- means this node has been visited, and it's done. So if a node's status is -1 while doing DFS, it means there must be a cycle existed.