Java: how to represent graphs?

Question

I\'m implementing some algorithms to teach myself about graphs and how to work with them. What would you recommend is the best way to do that in Java? I was thinking somethi

Answer 1

A simple representation written by 'Robert Sedgwick' and 'Kevin Wayne' is available at http://algs4.cs.princeton.edu/41graph/Graph.java.html

Explanation copied from the above page.

The Graph class represents an undirected graph of vertices named 0 through V - 1.

It supports the following two primary operations: add an edge to the graph, iterate over all of the vertices adjacent to a vertex. It also provides methods for returning the number of vertices V and the number of edges E. Parallel edges and self-loops are permitted. By convention, a self-loop v-v appears in the adjacency list of v twice and contributes two to the degree of v.

This implementation uses an adjacency-lists representation, which is a vertex-indexed array of Bag objects. All operations take constant time (in the worst case) except iterating over the vertices adjacent to a given vertex, which takes time proportional to the number of such vertices.