How to determine if two nodes are connected?

Question

I\'m concerned that this might be working on an NP-Complete problem. I\'m hoping someone can give me an answer as to whether it is or not. And I\'m looking for more of an an

Answer 1

Assuming that you have an adjacency matrix:

bool[,] adj = new bool[n, n];

Where bool[i,j] = true if there is an open path between i and j and bool[i,i] = false.

public bool pathExists(int[,] adj, int start, int end)
{
  List visited = new List();
  List inprocess = new List();
  inprocess.Add(start);

  while(inprocess.Count > 0)
  {
    int cur = inprocess[0];
    inprocess.RemoveAt(0);
    if(cur == end)
      return true;
    if(visited.Contains(cur))
      continue;
    visited.Add(cur);
    for(int i = 0; i < adj.Length; i++)
      if(adj[cur, i] && !visited.Contains(i) && !inprocess.Contains(i))
        inprocess.Add(i);
  }
  return false;
}

Here is a recursive version of the algorithm above (written in Ruby):

def connected? from, to, edges
  return true if from == to
  return true if edges.include?([from, to])
  return true if edges.include?([to, from])

  adjacent = edges.find_all { |e| e.include? from }
                  .flatten
                  .reject { |e| e == from }

  return adjacent.map do |a|
    connected? a, to, edges.reject { |e| e.include? from }
  end.any?
end