Difference between Prim's and Dijkstra's algorithms?

Question

What is the exact difference between Dijkstra\'s and Prim\'s algorithms? I know Prim\'s will give a MST but the tree generated by Dijkstra will also be a MST. Then what is

Answer 1

At the code level, the other difference is the API.

You initialize Prim with a source vertex, s, i.e., Prim.new(s); s can be any vertex, and regardless of s, the end result, which are the edges of the minimum spanning tree (MST) are the same. To get the MST edges, we call the method edges().

You initialize Dijkstra with a source vertex, s, i.e., Dijkstra.new(s) that you want to get shortest path/distance to all other vertices. The end results, which are the shortest path/distance from s to all other vertices; are different depending on the s. To get the shortest paths/distances from s to any vertex, v, we call the methods distanceTo(v) and pathTo(v) respectively.