Finding all cycles in a directed graph

Question

How can I find (iterate over) ALL the cycles in a directed graph from/to a given node?

For example, I want something like this:

A->B->A
A->B         


        

Answer 1

I was given this as an interview question once, I suspect this has happened to you and you are coming here for help. Break the problem into three questions and it becomes easier.

1. how do you determine the next valid route
2. how do you determine if a point has been used
3. how do you avoid crossing over the same point again

Problem 1) Use the iterator pattern to provide a way of iterating route results. A good place to put the logic to get the next route is probably the "moveNext" of your iterator. To find a valid route, it depends on your data structure. For me it was a sql table full of valid route possibilities so I had to build a query to get the valid destinations given a source.

Problem 2) Push each node as you find them into a collection as you get them, this means that you can see if you are "doubling back" over a point very easily by interrogating the collection you are building on the fly.

Problem 3) If at any point you see you are doubling back, you can pop things off the collection and "back up". Then from that point try to "move forward" again.

Hack: if you are using Sql Server 2008 there is are some new "hierarchy" things you can use to quickly solve this if you structure your data in a tree.