Note: The translation for this entry is currently under quality review. Some content is temporarily displayed in English only.
breadth first search
This term is a technical specification used primarily in computer science and discrete mathematics. It describes a specific strategy for graph traversal where the search expands uniformly across the breadth of the structure, ensuring that all nodes at a given distance from the origin are visited before moving deeper. This distinguishes it from depth first search, which prioritizes exploring a single branch to its conclusion before backtracking.
In practical application, this algorithm is the standard approach for finding the shortest path in an unweighted graph. Because it explores all immediate neighbors first, the first time it encounters a target node, it is guaranteed to have found the path with the minimum number of edges.
Meanings
An algorithm for traversing or searching tree or graph data structures that starts at the root node and explores all neighboring nodes at the present depth prior to moving on to the nodes at the next depth level.
The developer implemented a breadth first search to find the shortest path between two nodes in the network.