Dijkstra's algorithm

Dijkstra's algorithm (/ˈdaɪ[Link]əz/, DYKE-strəz) is an

Dijkstra's algorithm
algorithm for finding the shortest paths between nodes
in a weighted graph, which may represent, for
example, a road network. It was conceived by
computer scientist Edsger W. Dijkstra in 1956 and
published three years later.[4][5][6]

Dijkstra's algorithm finds the shortest path from a

given source node to every other node.[7]: 196–206 It can
be used to find the shortest path to a specific
destination node, by terminating the algorithm after
determining the shortest path to that node. For Dijkstra's algorithm to find the shortest path
example, if the nodes of the graph represent cities, and between a and b. It picks the unvisited vertex
the costs of edges represent the distances between pairs with the lowest distance, calculates the
of cities connected by a direct road, then Dijkstra's distance through it to each unvisited neighbor,
algorithm can be used to find the shortest route and updates the neighbor's distance if smaller.
between one city and all other cities. A common Mark visited (set to red) when done with
application of shortest path algorithms is network neighbors.
routing protocols, most notably IS-IS (Intermediate
Class Search algorithm
System to Intermediate System) and OSPF (Open
Greedy algorithm
Shortest Path First). It is also employed as a subroutine
Dynamic programming[1]
in algorithms such as Johnson's algorithm.
Data structure Graph
The algorithm uses a min-priority queue data structure Usually used with priority
for selecting the shortest paths known so far. Before queue or heap for
more advanced priority queue structures were optimization[2][3]
discovered, Dijkstra's original algorithm ran in Worst-case [3]
[8][9]
time, where is the number of nodes. performance
Fredman & Tarjan 1984 proposed a Fibonacci heap
priority queue to optimize the running time complexity to . This is asymptotically
the fastest known single-source shortest-path algorithm for arbitrary directed graphs with unbounded non-
negative weights. However, specialized cases (such as bounded/integer weights, directed acyclic graphs
etc.) can be improved further. If preprocessing is allowed, algorithms such as contraction hierarchies can
be up to seven orders of magnitude faster.

Dijkstra's algorithm is commonly used on graphs where the edge weights are positive integers or real
numbers. It can be generalized to any graph where the edge weights are partially ordered, provided the
subsequent labels (a subsequent label is produced when traversing an edge) are monotonically non-
decreasing.[10][11]
In many fields, particularly artificial intelligence, Dijkstra's algorithm or a variant offers a uniform cost
search and is formulated as an instance of the more general idea of best-first search.[12]

History

What is the shortest way to travel from Rotterdam to Groningen, in general: from given city to
given city. It is the algorithm for the shortest path, which I designed in about twenty minutes.
One morning I was shopping in Amsterdam with my young fiancée, and tired, we sat down on
the café terrace to drink a cup of coffee and I was just thinking about whether I could do this,
and I then designed the algorithm for the shortest path. As I said, it was a twenty-minute
invention. In fact, it was published in '59, three years later. The publication is still readable, it
is, in fact, quite nice. One of the reasons that it is so nice was that I designed it without pencil
and paper. I learned later that one of the advantages of designing without pencil and paper is
that you are almost forced to avoid all avoidable complexities. Eventually, that algorithm
became to my great amazement, one of the cornerstones of my fame.

— Edsger Dijkstra, in an interview with Philip L. Frana, Communications of the ACM, 2001[5]
Dijkstra thought about the shortest path problem while working as a programmer at the Mathematical
Center in Amsterdam in 1956. He wanted to demonstrate the capabilities of the new ARMAC
computer.[13] His objective was to choose a problem and a computer solution that non-computing people
could understand. He designed the shortest path algorithm and later implemented it for ARMAC for a
slightly simplified transportation map of 64 cities in the Netherlands (he limited it to 64, so that 6 bits
would be sufficient to encode the city number).[5] A year later, he came across another problem advanced
by hardware engineers working on the institute's next computer: minimize the amount of wire needed to
connect the pins on the machine's back panel. As a solution, he re-discovered Prim's minimal spanning
tree algorithm (known earlier to Jarník, and also rediscovered by Prim).[14][15] Dijkstra published the
algorithm in 1959, two years after Prim and 29 years after Jarník.[16][17]

Algorithm
The algorithm requires a starting node, and computes the shortest distance from that starting node to each
other node. Dijkstra's algorithm starts with infinite distances and tries to improve them step by step:

1. Create a set of all unvisited nodes: the unvisited set.

2. Assign to every node a distance from start value: for the starting node, it is zero, and for all
other nodes, it is infinity, since initially no path is known to these nodes. During execution,
the distance of a node N is the length of the shortest path discovered so far between the
starting node and N.[18]
3. From the unvisited set, select the current node to be the one with the smallest (finite)
distance; initially, this is the starting node (distance zero). If the unvisited set is empty, or
contains only nodes with infinite distance (which are unreachable), then the algorithm
terminates by skipping to step 6. If the only concern is the path to a target node, the
 algorithm terminates once the current node is the target
node. Otherwise, the algorithm continues.
4. For the current node, consider all of its unvisited
neighbors and update their distances through the current
node; compare the newly calculated distance to the one
currently assigned to the neighbor and assign the smaller
one to it. For example, if the current node A is marked
with a distance of 6, and the edge connecting it with its
neighbor B has length 2, then the distance to B through A
is 6 + 2 = 8. If B was previously marked with a distance
greater than 8, then update it to 8 (the path to B through A
is shorter). Otherwise, keep its current distance (the path
to B through A is not the shortest). Illustration of Dijkstra's algorithm
5. After considering all of the current node's unvisited finding a path from a start node
neighbors, the current node is removed from the unvisited (lower left, red) to a target node
set. Thus a visited node is never rechecked, which is (upper right, green) in a robot
correct because the distance recorded on the current motion planning problem. Open
node is minimal (as ensured in step 3), and thus final. nodes represent the "tentative" set
Repeat from step 3. (aka set of "unvisited" nodes).
6. Once the loop exits (steps 3–5), every visited node Filled nodes are the visited ones,
contains its shortest distance from the starting node. with color representing the
distance: the redder, the closer (to
the start node). Nodes in all the
Description different directions are explored
uniformly, appearing more-or-less
The shortest path between two intersections on a city map can be as a circular wavefront as
found by this algorithm using pencil and paper. Every intersection is Dijkstra's algorithm uses a
listed on a separate line: one is the starting point and is labeled heuristic of picking the shortest
(given a distance of) 0. Every other intersection is initially labeled known path so far.
with a distance of infinity. This is done to note that no path to these
intersections has yet been established. At each iteration one
intersection becomes the current intersection. For the first iteration, this is the starting point.

From the current intersection, the distance to every neighbor (directly-connected) intersection is assessed
by summing the label (value) of the current intersection and the distance to the neighbor and then
relabeling the neighbor with the lesser of that sum and the neighbor's existing label. I.e., the neighbor is
relabeled if the path to it through the current intersection is shorter than previously assessed paths. If so,
mark the road to the neighbor with an arrow pointing to it, and erase any other arrow that points to it.
After the distances to each of the current intersection's neighbors have been assessed, the current
intersection is marked as visited. The unvisited intersection with the smallest label becomes the current
intersection and the process repeats until all nodes with labels less than the destination's label have been
visited.

Once no unvisited nodes remain with a label smaller than the destination's label, the remaining arrows
show the shortest path.
Pseudocode
In the following pseudocode, dist is an array that contains the current distances from the source to
other vertices, i.e. dist[u] is the current distance from the source to the vertex u. The prev array
contains pointers to previous-hop nodes on the shortest path from source to the given vertex
(equivalently, it is the next-hop on the path from the given vertex to the source). The code u ← vertex
in Q with min dist[u], searches for the vertex u in the vertex set Q that has the least dist[u]
value. [Link](u,v) returns the length of the edge joining (i.e. the distance between) the
two neighbor-nodes u and v. The variable alt on line 14 is the length of the path from the source
node to the neighbor node v if it were to go through u. If this path is shorter than the current shortest path
recorded for v, then the distance of v is updated to alt.[7]

1 function Dijkstra(Graph, source):

2
3 for each vertex v in [Link]:
4 dist[v] ← INFINITY
5 prev[v] ← UNDEFINED
6 add v to Q
7 dist[source] ← 0
8
9 while Q is not empty:
10 u ← vertex in Q with minimum dist[u]
11 [Link](u)
12
13 for each edge (u, v) in Graph:
14 alt ← dist[u] + [Link](u,v)
15 if alt < dist[v]:
16 dist[v] ← alt
17 prev[v] ← u
18
19 return dist[], prev[]
A demo of Dijkstra's algorithm based on
To find the shortest path between vertices source and Euclidean distance. Red lines are the
shortest path covering, i.e., connecting u
target, the search terminates after line 10 if u =
and prev[u]. Blue lines indicate where
target. The shortest path from source to target can be relaxing happens, i.e., connecting v with
obtained by reverse iteration: a node u in Q, which gives a shorter path
from the source to v.
1 S ← empty sequence
2 u ← target
3 if prev[u] is defined or u = source: // Proceed if
the vertex is reachable
4 while u is defined: // Construct
shortest path with stack S
5 [Link](u) // Push the
vertex onto the stack
6 u ← prev[u] // Traverse
from target to source

Now sequence S is the list of vertices constituting one of the shortest paths from source to target, or
the empty sequence if no path exists.

A more general problem is to find all the shortest paths between source and target (there might be
several of the same length). Then instead of storing only a single node in each entry of prev[] all nodes
satisfying the relaxation condition can be stored. For example, if both r and source connect to
target and they lie on different shortest paths through target (because the edge cost is the same in
both cases), then both r and source are added to prev[target]. When the algorithm completes,
prev[] data structure describes a graph that is a subset of the original graph with some edges removed.
Its key property is that if the algorithm was run with some starting node, then every path from that node
to any other node in the new graph is the shortest path between those nodes graph, and all paths of that
length from the original graph are present in the new graph. Then to actually find all these shortest paths
between two given nodes, a path finding algorithm on the new graph, such as depth-first search would
work.

Using a priority queue

A min-priority queue is an abstract data type that provides 3 basic operations:
add_with_priority(), decrease_priority() and extract_min(). As mentioned earlier,
using such a data structure can lead to faster computing times than using a basic queue. Notably,
Fibonacci heap[19] or Brodal queue offer optimal implementations for those 3 operations. As the
algorithm is slightly different in appearance, it is mentioned here, in pseudocode as well:

1 function Dijkstra(Graph, source):

2 Q ← Queue storing vertex priority
3
4 dist[source] ← 0 // Initialization
5 Q.add_with_priority(source, 0) // associated priority equals dist[·]
6
7 for each vertex v in [Link]:
8 if v ≠ source
9 prev[v] ← UNDEFINED // Predecessor of v
10 dist[v] ← INFINITY // Unknown distance from source to v
11 Q.add_with_priority(v, INFINITY)
12
13
14 while Q is not empty: // The main loop
15 u ← Q.extract_min() // Remove and return best vertex
16 for each arc (u, v) : // Go through all v neighbors of u
17 alt ← dist[u] + [Link](u,v)
18 if alt < dist[v]:
19 prev[v] ← u
20 dist[v] ← alt
21 Q.decrease_priority(v, alt)
22
23 return (dist, prev)

Instead of filling the priority queue with all nodes in the initialization phase, it is possible to initialize it to
contain only source; then, inside the if alt < dist[v] block, the decrease_priority()
becomes an add_with_priority() operation.[7]: 198

Yet another alternative is to add nodes unconditionally to the priority queue and to instead check after
extraction (u ← Q.extract_min()) that it isn't revisiting, or that no shorter connection was found
yet in the if alt < dist[v] block. This can be done by additionally extracting the associated
priority p from the queue and only processing further if p == dist[u] inside the while Q is
not empty loop.[20]

These alternatives can use entirely array-based priority queues without decrease-key functionality, which
have been found to achieve even faster computing times in practice. However, the difference in
performance was found to be narrower for denser graphs.[21]
Proof
To prove the correctness of Dijkstra's algorithm, mathematical induction can be used on the number of
visited nodes.[22]

Invariant hypothesis: For each visited node v, dist[v] is the shortest distance from source to v, and
for each unvisited node u, dist[u] is the shortest distance from source to u when traveling via
visited nodes only, or infinity if no such path exists. (Note: we do not assume dist[u] is the actual
shortest distance for unvisited nodes, while dist[v] is the actual shortest distance)

Base case
The base case is when there is just one visited node, source. Its distance is defined to be zero, which is
the shortest distance, since negative weights are not allowed. Hence, the hypothesis holds.

Induction
Assuming that the hypothesis holds for visited nodes, to show it holds for nodes, let u be the next
visited node, i.e. the node with minimum dist[u]. The claim is that dist[u] is the shortest distance
from source to u.

The proof is by contradiction. If a shorter path were available, then this shorter path either contains
another unvisited node or not.

In the former case, let w be the first unvisited node on this shorter path. By induction, the
shortest paths from source to u and w through visited nodes only have costs dist[u] and
dist[w] respectively. This means the cost of going from source to u via w has the cost of
at least dist[w] + the minimal cost of going from w to u. As the edge costs are positive, the
minimal cost of going from w to u is a positive number. However, dist[u] is at most
dist[w] because otherwise w would have been picked by the priority queue instead of u.
This is a contradiction, since it has already been established that dist[w] + a positive
number < dist[u].
In the latter case, let w be the last but one node on the shortest path. That means dist[w]
+ [Link][w,u] < dist[u]. That is a contradiction because by the time w is
visited, it should have set dist[u] to at most dist[w] + [Link][w,u].
For all other visited nodes v, the dist[v] is already known to be the shortest distance from source
already, because of the inductive hypothesis, and these values are unchanged.

After processing u, it is still true that for each unvisited node w, dist[w] is the shortest distance from
source to w using visited nodes only. Any shorter path that did not use u, would already have been
found, and if a shorter path used u it would have been updated when processing u.

After all nodes are visited, the shortest path from source to any node v consists only of visited nodes.
Therefore, dist[v] is the shortest distance.
Running time
Bounds of the running time of Dijkstra's algorithm on a graph with edges E and vertices V can be
expressed as a function of the number of edges, denoted , and the number of vertices, denoted ,
using big-O notation. The complexity bound depends mainly on the data structure used to represent the
set Q. In the following, upper bounds can be simplified because is for any simple graph, but
that simplification disregards the fact that in some problems, other upper bounds on may hold.

For any data structure for the vertex set Q, the running time is:[2]

where and are the complexities of the decrease-key and extract-minimum operations in Q,
respectively.

The simplest version of Dijkstra's algorithm stores the vertex set Q as a linked list or array, and edges as
an adjacency list or matrix. In this case, extract-minimum is simply a linear search through all vertices in
Q, so the running time is .

For sparse graphs, that is, graphs with far fewer than edges, Dijkstra's algorithm can be implemented
more efficiently by storing the graph in the form of adjacency lists and using a self-balancing binary
search tree, binary heap, pairing heap, Fibonacci heap or a priority heap as a priority queue to implement
extracting minimum efficiently. To perform decrease-key steps in a binary heap efficiently, it is necessary
to use an auxiliary data structure that maps each vertex to its position in the heap, and to update this
structure as the priority queue Q changes. With a self-balancing binary search tree or binary heap, the
algorithm requires time in the worst case; for connected graphs this time bound
can be simplified to . The Fibonacci heap improves this to .

When using binary heaps, the average case time complexity is lower than the worst-case: assuming edge
costs are drawn independently from a common probability distribution, the expected number of decrease-
key operations is bounded by , giving a total running time of[7]: 199–200

Practical optimizations and infinite graphs

In common presentations of Dijkstra's algorithm, initially all nodes are entered into the priority queue.
This is, however, not necessary: the algorithm can start with a priority queue that contains only one item,
and insert new items as they are discovered (instead of doing a decrease-key, check whether the key is in
the queue; if it is, decrease its key, otherwise insert it).[7]: 198 This variant has the same worst-case bounds
as the common variant, but maintains a smaller priority queue in practice, speeding up queue
operations.[12]
Moreover, not inserting all nodes in a graph makes it possible to extend the algorithm to find the shortest
path from a single source to the closest of a set of target nodes on infinite graphs or those too large to
represent in memory. The resulting algorithm is called uniform-cost search (UCS) in the artificial
intelligence literature[12][23][24] and can be expressed in pseudocode as

procedure uniform_cost_search(start) is
node ← start
frontier ← priority queue containing node only
expanded ← empty set
do
if frontier is empty then
return failure
node ← [Link]()
if node is a goal state then
return solution(node)
[Link](node)
for each of node's neighbors n do
if n is not in expanded and not in frontier then
[Link](n)
else if n is in frontier with higher cost
replace existing node with n

Its complexity can be expressed in an alternative way for very large graphs: when C* is the length of the
shortest path from the start node to any node satisfying the "goal" predicate, each edge has cost at least ε,
and the number of neighbors per node is bounded by b, then the algorithm's worst-case time and space
*
complexity are both in O(b1+⌊C ⁄ ε⌋).[23]

Further optimizations for the single-target case include bidirectional variants, goal-directed variants such
as the A* algorithm (see § Related problems and algorithms), graph pruning to determine which nodes
are likely to form the middle segment of shortest paths (reach-based routing), and hierarchical
decompositions of the input graph that reduce s–t routing to connecting s and t to their respective "transit
nodes" followed by shortest-path computation between these transit nodes using a "highway".[25]
Combinations of such techniques may be needed for optimal practical performance on specific
problems.[26]

Bidirectional Dijkstra
Bidirectional Dijkstra is a variant of Dijkstra's algorithm designed to efficiently compute the shortest
path between a given source vertex s and target vertex t, rather than all vertices. The key idea is to run
two simultaneous searches: one forward from s on the original graph and one backward from t on the
graph with edges reversed. Each search maintains its own tentative distance estimates, priority queue, and
set of "settled" vertices. The two frontiers advance toward each other and meet somewhere along the
shortest s–t path.[27]

Two distance arrays are maintained: df[v] (distance from s to v) and db[v] (distance from v to t),
initialized to ∞ except df[s] = 0 and db[t] = 0. Two priority queues Qf and Qb hold vertices not yet
fully processed, and two sets Sf and Sb store vertices whose shortest-path distance is finalized in each
direction. A variable μ stores the length of the best full s–t path found so far, initially ∞.

The algorithm repeatedly extracts the minimum-distance vertex from whichever queue currently has the
smaller key, relaxes its outgoing (or incoming) edges, and updates μ whenever it discovers a connection
between the two settled sets:
 when relaxing edge in the forward search and
,
and symmetrically for the backward search.

A key feature is the stopping condition: once the sum of the current minimum priorities in both queues is
at least μ, no yet-unsettled path can improve upon μ. At this point μ equals the true shortest-path distance
δ(s,t), and the search terminates.[27]
This criterion avoids a common mistake of halting as soon as the two frontiers touch, which may
overlook a shorter alternative crossing elsewhere.

Because each search only needs to explore roughly half of the search space in typical graphs, the
bidirectional method often visits far fewer vertices and relaxes far fewer edges than one-directional
Dijkstra on single-pair queries. In road-network–like graphs the savings can be dramatic, sometimes
reducing the explored region from an exponential-size ball to two smaller half-balls.

The method is widely used in point-to-point routing for maps and navigation software and serves as a
base for many speed-up techniques such as the ALT, contraction hierarchies, and reach-based routing.[28]

If the actual shortest path (not just its distance) is desired, predecessor pointers can be stored in both
searches. When μ is updated through some crossing vertex x, the algorithm records this meeting point and
reconstructs the final route as the forward path from s to x concatenated with the backward path from x to
t.
Theoretical research shows that an optimized bidirectional approach can be instance-optimal, meaning no
correct algorithm can asymptotically relax fewer edges on the same graph instance.[29]

Practical performance considerations

Although Dijkstra's algorithm is optimal for graphs with non-negative edge weights, its practical runtime
depends on both data structures and graph properties. Using a binary heap results in a running time of
O((V+E)logV). Alternatives such as Fibonacci heaps provide better theoretical bounds but often perform
worse in real applications because of large constant factors.[30]

Graph structure also plays a major role. Sparse networks, such as road maps, allow Dijkstra's algorithm to
operate efficiently since most vertices have low degree. Dense graphs increase relaxations and slow down
the process. Because of this, modern routing systems often use Dijkstra's algorithm together with
preprocessing methods such as A* search, landmark heuristics, or contraction hierarchies, which
significantly reduce the search space.[31]

Memory locality is another important factor. Cache-optimized priority queues and adjacency layouts can
reduce latency for large graphs that exceed CPU cache limitations.[32]

Because of these considerations, most real-world systems use specialized Dijkstra variants tuned for
specific graph families and hardware constraints.
Optimality for comparison-sorting by distance
As well as simply computing distances and paths, Dijkstra's algorithm can be used to sort vertices by
their distances from a given starting vertex. In 2023, Haeupler, Rozhoň, Tětek, Hladík, and Tarjan (one of
the inventors of the 1984 heap), proved that, for this sorting problem on a positively-weighted directed
graph, a version of Dijkstra's algorithm with a special heap data structure has a runtime and number of
comparisons that is within a constant factor of optimal among comparison-based algorithms for the same
sorting problem on the same graph and starting vertex but with variable edge weights. To achieve this,
they use a comparison-based heap whose cost of returning/removing the minimum element from the heap
is logarithmic in the number of elements inserted after it rather than in the number of elements in the
heap.[33][34]

Specialized variants
When arc weights are small integers (bounded by a parameter ), specialized queues can be used for
increased speed. The first algorithm of this type was Dial's algorithm[35] for graphs with positive integer
edge weights, which uses a bucket queue to obtain a running time . The use of a Van
Emde Boas tree as the priority queue brings the complexity to .[36]
Another interesting variant based on a combination of a new radix heap and the well-known Fibonacci
heap runs in time .[36] Finally, the best algorithms in this special case run in
[37]
time and time.[38]

Related problems and algorithms

Dijkstra's original algorithm can be extended with modifications. For example, sometimes it is desirable
to present solutions which are less than mathematically optimal. To obtain a ranked list of less-than-
optimal solutions, the optimal solution is first calculated. A single edge appearing in the optimal solution
is removed from the graph, and the optimum solution to this new graph is calculated. Each edge of the
original solution is suppressed in turn and a new shortest-path calculated. The secondary solutions are
then ranked and presented after the first optimal solution.

Dijkstra's algorithm is usually the working principle behind link-state routing protocols. OSPF and IS-IS
are the most common.

Unlike Dijkstra's algorithm, the Bellman–Ford algorithm can be used on graphs with negative edge
weights, as long as the graph contains no negative cycle reachable from the source vertex s. The presence
of such cycles means that no shortest path can be found, since the label becomes lower each time the
cycle is traversed. (This statement assumes that a "path" is allowed to repeat vertices. In graph theory that
is normally not allowed. In theoretical computer science it often is allowed.) It is possible to adapt
Dijkstra's algorithm to handle negative weights by combining it with the Bellman-Ford algorithm (to
remove negative edges and detect negative cycles): Johnson's algorithm.

The A* algorithm is a generalization of Dijkstra's algorithm that reduces the size of the subgraph that
must be explored, if additional information is available that provides a lower bound on the distance to the
target.
The process that underlies Dijkstra's algorithm is similar to the greedy process used in Prim's algorithm.
Prim's purpose is to find a minimum spanning tree that connects all nodes in the graph; Dijkstra is
concerned with only two nodes. Prim's does not evaluate the total weight of the path from the starting
node, only the individual edges.

Breadth-first search can be viewed as a special-case of Dijkstra's algorithm on unweighted graphs, where
the priority queue degenerates into a FIFO queue.

The fast marching method can be viewed as a continuous version of Dijkstra's algorithm which computes
the geodesic distance on a triangle mesh.

Dynamic programming perspective

From a dynamic programming point of view, Dijkstra's algorithm is a successive approximation scheme
that solves the dynamic programming functional equation for the shortest path problem by the Reaching
method.[39][40][41]

In fact, Dijkstra's explanation of the logic behind the algorithm:[42]

Problem 2. Find the path of minimum total length between two given nodes P and Q. We use
the fact that, if R is a node on the minimal path from P to Q, knowledge of the latter implies
the knowledge of the minimal path from P to R.

is a paraphrasing of Bellman's principle of optimality in the context of the shortest path problem.

See also
A* search algorithm
Bellman–Ford algorithm
Euclidean shortest path
Floyd–Warshall algorithm
Johnson's algorithm
Longest path problem
Parallel all-pairs shortest path algorithm

Notes
1. Controversial, see Moshe Sniedovich (2006). "Dijkstra's algorithm revisited: the dynamic
programming connexion" ([Link]
BAT5-0013-0005/tab/summary). Control and Cybernetics. 35: 599–620. and below part.
2. Cormen et al. 2001.
3. Fredman & Tarjan 1987.