What is the time complexity of a breadth-first search (BFS) on a graph?

Practice Questions

Q1
What is the time complexity of a breadth-first search (BFS) on a graph?
  1. O(V)
  2. O(E)
  3. O(V + E)
  4. O(V^2)

Questions & Step-by-Step Solutions

What is the time complexity of a breadth-first search (BFS) on a graph?
  • Step 1: Understand that BFS is a way to explore all the vertices in a graph.
  • Step 2: Know that a graph consists of vertices (nodes) and edges (connections between nodes).
  • Step 3: Realize that during BFS, we visit each vertex once.
  • Step 4: Also, during BFS, we look at each edge that connects the vertices.
  • Step 5: Count the total number of vertices in the graph as V.
  • Step 6: Count the total number of edges in the graph as E.
  • Step 7: Since we visit each vertex and each edge once, we add these counts together.
  • Step 8: The total time taken for BFS is proportional to the sum of vertices and edges, which is expressed as O(V + E).
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