What if the only negative edge costs are coming from the initial node? Will the algorithm still work?
I feel like yes, because I can't think of a counter-example, but I'm having trouble proving it. Is there a counter-example?
Negative edges are a problem for Dijkstra's because there's no guarantee that the edge you pick produces the shortest path if there is an edge you can pick later that is largely negatively weighted. But if the only negative edges are coming out of the initial node, I don't see the problem.
I'm not looking for an algorithm. I'm looking for some insight into the Dijkstra's.
I'm talking about a directed graph, if that makes a difference.
The trouble with having a negative-cost edge is that you can go back and forth along it as many times as you like.
If you impose a rule that an edge may not be used more than once, you still have a problem. Dijkstra's algorithm involves marking a node as "visited", when it's distance from the initial node is considered know once and for all. This happens before all of the edges have been examined; the shortest path from the initial node to node X has been found, all other paths from the initial node are already longer than that, nothing that is discovered later can make those paths shorter. But if there are negative-cost edges somewhere, then a later discovery can make a path shorter, so it may be that a shorter path exists which Dijkstra will not discover.
If only the edges that connect to the initial node may have negative costs, then you still have problem, because the shortest path might involve revisiting the initial node to take advantage of the negative costs, something Dijkstra cannot do.
If you impose another rule that a node may not be visited more than once, then Dijkstra's algorithm works. Notice that in Dijkstra's algorithm, the initial node is given an initial distance of zero. If you give it some other initial distance, the algorithm will still find the shortest path-- but all of the distances will be off by that same amount. (If you want the real distance at the end, you must subtract the value you put in.)
So take your graph, call it A, find the smallest cost of any edge connected to the initial node, call it k which will be negative in this case).
Make a new graph B which you get by subtracting k from the cost of each edge connected to the initial node. Note that all of these costs are now non-negative. So Dijkstra works on B. Also note that the shortest path in B is also the shortest path in A.
Assign the initial node of B the distance k, then run Dijkstra (this will give the same path as running with an initial distance of zero). Compare this to running Dijkstra naively on A: once you leave the initial node everything's the same in the two graphs. The distances are the same, the decisions are the same, the two will produce the same path. And in the case of A the distace will be correct, since it started at zero.
Counter-example:
Graph G = (V, E), with vertices V = {A, B}, edges E = {(A, B), (B, A)} and weight function w(A, B) = -2, w(B, A) = +1.
There's a negative weight cycle, hence minimum distances are undefined (even using A as initial node).
Dijkstra's algorithm doesn't produce correct answer for graph with negative edge weights (even if graph doesn't have any negative weight cycle). For e.g. it computes incorrect shortest path value between (A, C) for following graph with source vertex A,
A -> B : 6
A -> C : 5
B -> D : 2
B -> E : 1
D -> E : -5
E -> C : -2
Related
Can somebody tell me why Dijkstra's algorithm for single source shortest path assumes that the edges must be non-negative.
I am talking about only edges not the negative weight cycles.
Recall that in Dijkstra's algorithm, once a vertex is marked as "closed" (and out of the open set) - the algorithm found the shortest path to it, and will never have to develop this node again - it assumes the path developed to this path is the shortest.
But with negative weights - it might not be true. For example:
A
/ \
/ \
/ \
5 2
/ \
B--(-10)-->C
V={A,B,C} ; E = {(A,C,2), (A,B,5), (B,C,-10)}
Dijkstra from A will first develop C, and will later fail to find A->B->C
EDIT a bit deeper explanation:
Note that this is important, because in each relaxation step, the algorithm assumes the "cost" to the "closed" nodes is indeed minimal, and thus the node that will next be selected is also minimal.
The idea of it is: If we have a vertex in open such that its cost is minimal - by adding any positive number to any vertex - the minimality will never change.
Without the constraint on positive numbers - the above assumption is not true.
Since we do "know" each vertex which was "closed" is minimal - we can safely do the relaxation step - without "looking back". If we do need to "look back" - Bellman-Ford offers a recursive-like (DP) solution of doing so.
Consider the graph shown below with the source as Vertex A. First try running Dijkstra’s algorithm yourself on it.
When I refer to Dijkstra’s algorithm in my explanation I will be talking about the Dijkstra's Algorithm as implemented below,
So starting out the values (the distance from the source to the vertex) initially assigned to each vertex are,
We first extract the vertex in Q = [A,B,C] which has smallest value, i.e. A, after which Q = [B, C]. Note A has a directed edge to B and C, also both of them are in Q, therefore we update both of those values,
Now we extract C as (2<5), now Q = [B]. Note that C is connected to nothing, so line16 loop doesn't run.
Finally we extract B, after which . Note B has a directed edge to C but C isn't present in Q therefore we again don't enter the for loop in line16,
So we end up with the distances as
Note how this is wrong as the shortest distance from A to C is 5 + -10 = -5, when you go .
So for this graph Dijkstra's Algorithm wrongly computes the distance from A to C.
This happens because Dijkstra's Algorithm does not try to find a shorter path to vertices which are already extracted from Q.
What the line16 loop is doing is taking the vertex u and saying "hey looks like we can go to v from source via u, is that (alt or alternative) distance any better than the current dist[v] we got? If so lets update dist[v]"
Note that in line16 they check all neighbors v (i.e. a directed edge exists from u to v), of u which are still in Q. In line14 they remove visited notes from Q. So if x is a visited neighbour of u, the path is not even considered as a possible shorter way from source to v.
In our example above, C was a visited neighbour of B, thus the path was not considered, leaving the current shortest path unchanged.
This is actually useful if the edge weights are all positive numbers, because then we wouldn't waste our time considering paths that can't be shorter.
So I say that when running this algorithm if x is extracted from Q before y, then its not possible to find a path - which is shorter. Let me explain this with an example,
As y has just been extracted and x had been extracted before itself, then dist[y] > dist[x] because otherwise y would have been extracted before x. (line 13 min distance first)
And as we already assumed that the edge weights are positive, i.e. length(x,y)>0. So the alternative distance (alt) via y is always sure to be greater, i.e. dist[y] + length(x,y)> dist[x]. So the value of dist[x] would not have been updated even if y was considered as a path to x, thus we conclude that it makes sense to only consider neighbors of y which are still in Q (note comment in line16)
But this thing hinges on our assumption of positive edge length, if length(u,v)<0 then depending on how negative that edge is we might replace the dist[x] after the comparison in line18.
So any dist[x] calculation we make will be incorrect if x is removed before all vertices v - such that x is a neighbour of v with negative edge connecting them - is removed.
Because each of those v vertices is the second last vertex on a potential "better" path from source to x, which is discarded by Dijkstra’s algorithm.
So in the example I gave above, the mistake was because C was removed before B was removed. While that C was a neighbour of B with a negative edge!
Just to clarify, B and C are A's neighbours. B has a single neighbour C and C has no neighbours. length(a,b) is the edge length between the vertices a and b.
Dijkstra's algorithm assumes paths can only become 'heavier', so that if you have a path from A to B with a weight of 3, and a path from A to C with a weight of 3, there's no way you can add an edge and get from A to B through C with a weight of less than 3.
This assumption makes the algorithm faster than algorithms that have to take negative weights into account.
Correctness of Dijkstra's algorithm:
We have 2 sets of vertices at any step of the algorithm. Set A consists of the vertices to which we have computed the shortest paths. Set B consists of the remaining vertices.
Inductive Hypothesis: At each step we will assume that all previous iterations are correct.
Inductive Step: When we add a vertex V to the set A and set the distance to be dist[V], we must prove that this distance is optimal. If this is not optimal then there must be some other path to the vertex V that is of shorter length.
Suppose this some other path goes through some vertex X.
Now, since dist[V] <= dist[X] , therefore any other path to V will be atleast dist[V] length, unless the graph has negative edge lengths.
Thus for dijkstra's algorithm to work, the edge weights must be non negative.
Dijkstra's Algorithm assumes that all edges are positive weighted and this assumption helps the algorithm run faster ( O(E*log(V) ) than others which take into account the possibility of negative edges (e.g bellman ford's algorithm with complexity of O(V^3)).
This algorithm wont give the correct result in the following case (with a -ve edge) where A is the source vertex:
Here, the shortest distance to vertex D from source A should have been 6. But according to Dijkstra's method the shortest distance will be 7 which is incorrect.
Also, Dijkstra's Algorithm may sometimes give correct solution even if there are negative edges. Following is an example of such a case:
However, It will never detect a negative cycle and always produce a result which will always be incorrect if a negative weight cycle is reachable from the source, as in such a case there exists no shortest path in the graph from the source vertex.
Try Dijkstra's algorithm on the following graph, assuming A is the source node and D is the destination, to see what is happening:
Note that you have to follow strictly the algorithm definition and you should not follow your intuition (which tells you the upper path is shorter).
The main insight here is that the algorithm only looks at all directly connected edges and it takes the smallest of these edge. The algorithm does not look ahead. You can modify this behavior , but then it is not the Dijkstra algorithm anymore.
You can use dijkstra's algorithm with negative edges not including negative cycle, but you must allow a vertex can be visited multiple times and that version will lose it's fast time complexity.
In that case practically I've seen it's better to use SPFA algorithm which have normal queue and can handle negative edges.
Recall that in Dijkstra's algorithm, once a vertex is marked as "closed" (and out of the open set) -it assumes that any node originating from it will lead to greater distance so, the algorithm found the shortest path to it, and will never have to develop this node again, but this doesn't hold true in case of negative weights.
The other answers so far demonstrate pretty well why Dijkstra's algorithm cannot handle negative weights on paths.
But the question itself is maybe based on a wrong understanding of the weight of paths. If negative weights on paths would be allowed in pathfinding algorithms in general, then you would get permanent loops that would not stop.
Consider this:
A <- 5 -> B <- (-1) -> C <- 5 -> D
What is the optimal path between A and D?
Any pathfinding algorithm would have to continuously loop between B and C because doing so would reduce the weight of the total path. So allowing negative weights for a connection would render any pathfindig algorithm moot, maybe except if you limit each connection to be used only once.
So, to explain this in more detail, consider the following paths and weights:
Path | Total weight
ABCD | 9
ABCBCD | 7
ABCBCBCD | 5
ABCBCBCBCD | 3
ABCBCBCBCBCD | 1
ABCBCBCBCBCBCD | -1
...
So, what's the perfect path? Any time the algorithm adds a BC step, it reduces the total weight by 2.
So the optimal path is A (BC) D with the BC part being looped forever.
Since Dijkstra's goal is to find the optimal path (not just any path), it, by definition, cannot work with negative weights, since it cannot find the optimal path.
Dijkstra will actually not loop, since it keeps a list of nodes that it has visited. But it will not find a perfect path, but instead just any path.
Adding few points to the explanation, on top of the previous answers, for the following simple example,
Dijktra's algorithm being greedy, it first finds the minimum distance vertex C from the source vertex A greedily and assigns the distance d[C] (from vertex A) to the weight of the edge AC.
The underlying assumption is that since C was picked first, there is no other vertex V in the graph s.t. w(AV) < w(AC), otherwise V would have been picked instead of C, by the algorithm.
Since by above logic, w(AC) <= w(AV), for all vertex V different from the vertices A and C. Now, clearly any other path P that starts from A and ends in C, going through V , i.e., the path P = A -> V -> ... -> C, will be longer in length (>= 2) and total cost of the path P will be sum of the edges on it, i.e., cost(P) >= w(AV) >= w(AC), assuming all edges on P have non-negative weights, so that
C can be safely removed from the queue Q, since d[C] can never get smaller / relaxed further under this assumption.
Obviously, the above assumption does not hold when some.edge on P is negative, in a which case d[C] may decrease further, but the algorithm can't take care of this scenario, since by that time it has removed C from the queue Q.
In Unweighted graph
Dijkstra can even work without set or priority queue, even if you just use STACK the algorithm will work but with Stack its time of execution will increase
Dijkstra don't repeat a node once its processed becoz it always tooks the minimum route , which means if you come to that node via any other path it will certainly have greater distance
For ex -
(0)
/
6 5
/
(2) (1)
\ /
4 7
\ /
(9)
here once you get to node 1 via 0 (as its minimum out of 5 and 6)so now there is no way you can get a minimum value for reaching 1
because all other path will add value to 5 and not decrease it
more over with Negative weights it will fall into infinite loop
In Unweighted graph
Dijkstra Algo will fall into loop if it has negative weight
In Directed graph
Dijkstra Algo will give RIGHT ANSWER except in case of Negative Cycle
Who says Dijkstra never visit a node more than once are 500% wrong
also who says Dijkstra can't work with negative weight are wrong
The following is the question I am working on:
Consider a directed, weighted graph
G
where all edge weights are
positive. The goal of this problem is to find the shortest path
in
G
between two pre-specified vertices
s
and
t
, but with an added twist: you are allowed to change the weight
of
exactly
one edge (of your
choosing) to zero.
In other words, you must pick an edge in
G
to set to zero that minimizes the shortest
path between
s
and
t
.
Give an efficient algorithm to achieve this goal in
O
(
E
lg
V
) time and analyze your algorithm’s running
time. Sub-optimal solutions will receive less credit.
Hint:
You may have to reverse the edges, run a
familiar algorithm a number of times, plus do some extra work
So I have tried running Dijkstra's from s to all other nodes and then I have tried reversing the edges and running it again from s to all other nodes. However, I found out that we have to run Dijskstra's from s to all other nodes and then reverse the edges and then run Dijkstra's from all other nodes to t. I am not exactly sure how this helps us to find the edge to set to zero. By my intuition I thought that we would simply set the maximum weight edge to zero. What is the point of reversing the edges?
We need to run Dijkstra's algorithm twice - once for the original graph with s as the source vertex, and once with the reversed graph and t as the source vertex. We'll denote the distance we get between vertex s and i from the first run as D(i) and the distance we get between vertex t and i second run D_rev(i).
Note that we can go follow the reversed edges backwards (i.e., follow them in the original direction), thus D_rev(i) is actually the shortest distance from vertex i to t. Similarly, D(i) is the shortest distance from vertex s to i following Dijkstra's algorithm.
We can now loop through all the edges, and for each edge e which connects v1 and v2, add up D(v1) and D_rev(v2), which corresponds to the weight of the path s -> v1 -> v2 -> t with e being the zero edge, since we can go from s to v1 with a distance of D(v1), set e to 0, go from v1 to v2, and then go from v2 to t with a distance of D_rev(v2). The minimum over these is the answer.
A rough proof sketch (and also a restatement) : if we set an edge e to 0, but don't use it in the path, we can be better off setting an edge that's in the path to 0. Thus, we need only consider paths that includes the zeroed edge. The shortest path through a zeroed edge e is to first take the shortest path from s to v1, and then take the shortest path from v2 to t, which are exactly what were computed using the Dijkstra algorithm, i.e., D and D_rev.
Hope this answer helps!
I'm quite surprised I couldn't find anything on this anywhere, it seems to be a problem that should be quite well known:
Consider the Euclidean shortest path problem, in two dimensions. Given a set of obstacle polygons P and two points a and b, we want to find the shortest path from a to b not intersecting the (interior of) any p in P.
To solve this, one can create the visibility graph for this problem, the graph whose nodes are the vertices of the elements of P, and where two nodes are connected if the straight line between them does not intersect any element of P. The edge weight for any such edge is simply the Euclidean distance between such two points. To solve this, one can then determine the shortest path from a to b in the graph, let's say with A*.
However, this is not a good approach. Creating the visibility graph in advance requires checking if any two vertices from any two polygons are connected, a check that has higher complexity than determining the distance between two nodes. So working with a modified version of A* that "does everything what it can before checking if two nodes are actually connected" actually speeds up the problem.
Still, A* and all other shortest path problems always start with an explicitly given graph for which adjacent vertices can be traversed cheaply. So my question is, is there a good (optimal?) algorithm for finding a shortest path between two nodes a and b in an "implicit graph" that minimizes checking if two nodes are connected?
Edit:
To clarify what I mean, this is an example of what I'm looking for:
Let V be a set, a, b elements of V. Suppose w: V x V -> D is a weighing function (to some linearly ordered set D) and c: V x V -> {true, false} returns true iff two elements of V are considered to be connected. Then the following algorithm finds the shortest path from a to b in V, i.e., returns a list [x_i | i < n] such that x_0 = a, x_{n-1} = b, and c(x_i, x_{i+1}) = true for all i < n - 1.
Let (V, E) be the complete graph with vertex set V.
do
Compute shortest path from a to b in (V, E) and put it in P = [p_0, ..., p_{n-1}]
if P = empty (there is no shortest path), return NoShortestPath
Let all_good = true
for i = 0 ... n - 2 do
if c(p_i, p_{i+1}) == false, remove edge (p_i, p_{i+1}) from E, set all_good = false and exit for loop
while all_good = false
For computing the shortest paths in the loop, one could use A* if an appropriate heuristic exists. Obviously this algorithm produces a shortest path from a to b.
Also, I suppose this algorithm is somehow optimal in calling c as rarely as possible. For its found shortest path, it must have ruled out all shorter paths that the function w would have allowed for.
But surely there is a better way?
Edit 2:
So I found a solution that works relatively well for what I'm trying to do: Using A*, when relaxing a node, instead of going through the neighbors and adding them to / updating them in the priority queue, I put all vertices into the priority queue, marked as hypothetical, together with hypothetical f and g values and the hypothetical parent. Then, when picking the next element from the priority queue, I check if the node's connection to its parent is actually given. If so, the node is progressed as normal, if not, it is discarded.
This greatly reduces the number of connectivity checks and improves performance for me a lot. But I'm sure there's still a more elegant way, in particular one where the "hypothetical new path" doesn't just extend by length one (parents are always actual, not hypothetical).
A* or Dijkstra's algorithm do not need an explicit graph to work, they actually only need:
source vertex (s)
A function next:V->2^V such that next(v)={u | there is an edge from v to u }
A function isGoal:V->{0,1} such that isGoal(v) = 1 iff v is a target node.
A weight function w:E->R such that w(u,v)= cost to move from u to v
And, of course, in addition A* is going to need a heuristic function h:V->R such that h(v) is the cost approximation.
With these functions, you can generate only the portion of the graph that is needed to find shortest path, on the fly.
In fact, A* algorithm is often used on infinite graphs (or huge graphs that do not fit in any existing storage) in artificial inteliigence problems using this approach.
The idea is, you only look on edges in A* from a given node (all (u,v) in E for some given u). You don't need the entire edges set E in order to do it, you can just use your next(u) function instead.
I tried googling it up, but nothing of value pops up.
The graph:
is undirected.
is represented as directed graph with double edges.
may contain edges with negative weights.
I know I can use Bellman-Ford to solve this in the directed case, but with undirected edges it will just return single edges (2-cycles) as its output. I need to find a cycle of size > 2.
Also, the algorithm is supposed to have run-time complexity O(V*E) and memory complexity O(V).
Looking at the Bellman-Ford algorithm, in step 2 you consider using every edge (u, v) to to find a shorter path to v and, if you see an improvement, you record it by setting predecessor[v] = u. This means that at each stage you know the predecessor of each node - so you can eliminate length two cycles by checking that predecessor[u] != v before you set predecessor[v] = u.
By eliminating these cycles you change the invariant of the induction - at each stage you are now finding the shortest route to u from s with at most i edges which does not include any length 2 cycles.
A cycle of length 3 or greater reachable from the source should still show up - the check for negative cycles looks for apparent improvements after you should have found every shortest path for lengths up to that necessary to visit every vertex.
Example:Consider G = {{A, B, C, D}, {AB=2, AC=2, BC=-3, BD=1, CD=1}}.
Updates, updating B then C then D:
A=0, B=C=D=infinity
A=0, B=2 from A, C=-1 from B, D=0 from C
A=0, B=1 from D, C=-2 from B, D=-1 from C
A=0, B=0 from D, C=-3 from B, D=-2 from C
A=-1 from C, B=-1 from D, C=-4 from B, D=-3 from C
...
Here is a proof that the distances will continue changing indefinitely in the presence of a negative cycle:
Suppose otherwise. Then there is an assignment of distances which is stable: no possible updating of any distance will decrease it. This means that the order in which edges are checked which might decrease a distance is irrelevant, since for this to be the case, every edge, when checked, leaves the distances unchanged.
Pick a point on a negative cycle and consider the path that goes along from that point until it wraps round and reaches itself again. Since checking the first edge in this path leaves everything unchanged, the distance at the far end of that edge minus the distance at the near end of that edge must be no more than the distance along the edge. Similarly, the distance two steps along the path minus the distance at the start of the path must be no more than the sum of the distances along the two edges concerned, or we would update the distance to the further of the two points. Carrying on, we work out that the distance at the end of the (circular) path must be no more than the start of the (circular path) plus the sum of the edges along that path, or something would have been updated. But the start and end of the path are the same point, because it is circular, and the sum of the distances along the edges is negative, because it is a negative cycle, so we reach a contradiction and there must in fact be some updating once we have checked all the edges along the circular path.
Can somebody tell me why Dijkstra's algorithm for single source shortest path assumes that the edges must be non-negative.
I am talking about only edges not the negative weight cycles.
Recall that in Dijkstra's algorithm, once a vertex is marked as "closed" (and out of the open set) - the algorithm found the shortest path to it, and will never have to develop this node again - it assumes the path developed to this path is the shortest.
But with negative weights - it might not be true. For example:
A
/ \
/ \
/ \
5 2
/ \
B--(-10)-->C
V={A,B,C} ; E = {(A,C,2), (A,B,5), (B,C,-10)}
Dijkstra from A will first develop C, and will later fail to find A->B->C
EDIT a bit deeper explanation:
Note that this is important, because in each relaxation step, the algorithm assumes the "cost" to the "closed" nodes is indeed minimal, and thus the node that will next be selected is also minimal.
The idea of it is: If we have a vertex in open such that its cost is minimal - by adding any positive number to any vertex - the minimality will never change.
Without the constraint on positive numbers - the above assumption is not true.
Since we do "know" each vertex which was "closed" is minimal - we can safely do the relaxation step - without "looking back". If we do need to "look back" - Bellman-Ford offers a recursive-like (DP) solution of doing so.
Consider the graph shown below with the source as Vertex A. First try running Dijkstra’s algorithm yourself on it.
When I refer to Dijkstra’s algorithm in my explanation I will be talking about the Dijkstra's Algorithm as implemented below,
So starting out the values (the distance from the source to the vertex) initially assigned to each vertex are,
We first extract the vertex in Q = [A,B,C] which has smallest value, i.e. A, after which Q = [B, C]. Note A has a directed edge to B and C, also both of them are in Q, therefore we update both of those values,
Now we extract C as (2<5), now Q = [B]. Note that C is connected to nothing, so line16 loop doesn't run.
Finally we extract B, after which . Note B has a directed edge to C but C isn't present in Q therefore we again don't enter the for loop in line16,
So we end up with the distances as
Note how this is wrong as the shortest distance from A to C is 5 + -10 = -5, when you go .
So for this graph Dijkstra's Algorithm wrongly computes the distance from A to C.
This happens because Dijkstra's Algorithm does not try to find a shorter path to vertices which are already extracted from Q.
What the line16 loop is doing is taking the vertex u and saying "hey looks like we can go to v from source via u, is that (alt or alternative) distance any better than the current dist[v] we got? If so lets update dist[v]"
Note that in line16 they check all neighbors v (i.e. a directed edge exists from u to v), of u which are still in Q. In line14 they remove visited notes from Q. So if x is a visited neighbour of u, the path is not even considered as a possible shorter way from source to v.
In our example above, C was a visited neighbour of B, thus the path was not considered, leaving the current shortest path unchanged.
This is actually useful if the edge weights are all positive numbers, because then we wouldn't waste our time considering paths that can't be shorter.
So I say that when running this algorithm if x is extracted from Q before y, then its not possible to find a path - which is shorter. Let me explain this with an example,
As y has just been extracted and x had been extracted before itself, then dist[y] > dist[x] because otherwise y would have been extracted before x. (line 13 min distance first)
And as we already assumed that the edge weights are positive, i.e. length(x,y)>0. So the alternative distance (alt) via y is always sure to be greater, i.e. dist[y] + length(x,y)> dist[x]. So the value of dist[x] would not have been updated even if y was considered as a path to x, thus we conclude that it makes sense to only consider neighbors of y which are still in Q (note comment in line16)
But this thing hinges on our assumption of positive edge length, if length(u,v)<0 then depending on how negative that edge is we might replace the dist[x] after the comparison in line18.
So any dist[x] calculation we make will be incorrect if x is removed before all vertices v - such that x is a neighbour of v with negative edge connecting them - is removed.
Because each of those v vertices is the second last vertex on a potential "better" path from source to x, which is discarded by Dijkstra’s algorithm.
So in the example I gave above, the mistake was because C was removed before B was removed. While that C was a neighbour of B with a negative edge!
Just to clarify, B and C are A's neighbours. B has a single neighbour C and C has no neighbours. length(a,b) is the edge length between the vertices a and b.
Dijkstra's algorithm assumes paths can only become 'heavier', so that if you have a path from A to B with a weight of 3, and a path from A to C with a weight of 3, there's no way you can add an edge and get from A to B through C with a weight of less than 3.
This assumption makes the algorithm faster than algorithms that have to take negative weights into account.
Correctness of Dijkstra's algorithm:
We have 2 sets of vertices at any step of the algorithm. Set A consists of the vertices to which we have computed the shortest paths. Set B consists of the remaining vertices.
Inductive Hypothesis: At each step we will assume that all previous iterations are correct.
Inductive Step: When we add a vertex V to the set A and set the distance to be dist[V], we must prove that this distance is optimal. If this is not optimal then there must be some other path to the vertex V that is of shorter length.
Suppose this some other path goes through some vertex X.
Now, since dist[V] <= dist[X] , therefore any other path to V will be atleast dist[V] length, unless the graph has negative edge lengths.
Thus for dijkstra's algorithm to work, the edge weights must be non negative.
Dijkstra's Algorithm assumes that all edges are positive weighted and this assumption helps the algorithm run faster ( O(E*log(V) ) than others which take into account the possibility of negative edges (e.g bellman ford's algorithm with complexity of O(V^3)).
This algorithm wont give the correct result in the following case (with a -ve edge) where A is the source vertex:
Here, the shortest distance to vertex D from source A should have been 6. But according to Dijkstra's method the shortest distance will be 7 which is incorrect.
Also, Dijkstra's Algorithm may sometimes give correct solution even if there are negative edges. Following is an example of such a case:
However, It will never detect a negative cycle and always produce a result which will always be incorrect if a negative weight cycle is reachable from the source, as in such a case there exists no shortest path in the graph from the source vertex.
Try Dijkstra's algorithm on the following graph, assuming A is the source node and D is the destination, to see what is happening:
Note that you have to follow strictly the algorithm definition and you should not follow your intuition (which tells you the upper path is shorter).
The main insight here is that the algorithm only looks at all directly connected edges and it takes the smallest of these edge. The algorithm does not look ahead. You can modify this behavior , but then it is not the Dijkstra algorithm anymore.
You can use dijkstra's algorithm with negative edges not including negative cycle, but you must allow a vertex can be visited multiple times and that version will lose it's fast time complexity.
In that case practically I've seen it's better to use SPFA algorithm which have normal queue and can handle negative edges.
Recall that in Dijkstra's algorithm, once a vertex is marked as "closed" (and out of the open set) -it assumes that any node originating from it will lead to greater distance so, the algorithm found the shortest path to it, and will never have to develop this node again, but this doesn't hold true in case of negative weights.
The other answers so far demonstrate pretty well why Dijkstra's algorithm cannot handle negative weights on paths.
But the question itself is maybe based on a wrong understanding of the weight of paths. If negative weights on paths would be allowed in pathfinding algorithms in general, then you would get permanent loops that would not stop.
Consider this:
A <- 5 -> B <- (-1) -> C <- 5 -> D
What is the optimal path between A and D?
Any pathfinding algorithm would have to continuously loop between B and C because doing so would reduce the weight of the total path. So allowing negative weights for a connection would render any pathfindig algorithm moot, maybe except if you limit each connection to be used only once.
So, to explain this in more detail, consider the following paths and weights:
Path | Total weight
ABCD | 9
ABCBCD | 7
ABCBCBCD | 5
ABCBCBCBCD | 3
ABCBCBCBCBCD | 1
ABCBCBCBCBCBCD | -1
...
So, what's the perfect path? Any time the algorithm adds a BC step, it reduces the total weight by 2.
So the optimal path is A (BC) D with the BC part being looped forever.
Since Dijkstra's goal is to find the optimal path (not just any path), it, by definition, cannot work with negative weights, since it cannot find the optimal path.
Dijkstra will actually not loop, since it keeps a list of nodes that it has visited. But it will not find a perfect path, but instead just any path.
Adding few points to the explanation, on top of the previous answers, for the following simple example,
Dijktra's algorithm being greedy, it first finds the minimum distance vertex C from the source vertex A greedily and assigns the distance d[C] (from vertex A) to the weight of the edge AC.
The underlying assumption is that since C was picked first, there is no other vertex V in the graph s.t. w(AV) < w(AC), otherwise V would have been picked instead of C, by the algorithm.
Since by above logic, w(AC) <= w(AV), for all vertex V different from the vertices A and C. Now, clearly any other path P that starts from A and ends in C, going through V , i.e., the path P = A -> V -> ... -> C, will be longer in length (>= 2) and total cost of the path P will be sum of the edges on it, i.e., cost(P) >= w(AV) >= w(AC), assuming all edges on P have non-negative weights, so that
C can be safely removed from the queue Q, since d[C] can never get smaller / relaxed further under this assumption.
Obviously, the above assumption does not hold when some.edge on P is negative, in a which case d[C] may decrease further, but the algorithm can't take care of this scenario, since by that time it has removed C from the queue Q.
In Unweighted graph
Dijkstra can even work without set or priority queue, even if you just use STACK the algorithm will work but with Stack its time of execution will increase
Dijkstra don't repeat a node once its processed becoz it always tooks the minimum route , which means if you come to that node via any other path it will certainly have greater distance
For ex -
(0)
/
6 5
/
(2) (1)
\ /
4 7
\ /
(9)
here once you get to node 1 via 0 (as its minimum out of 5 and 6)so now there is no way you can get a minimum value for reaching 1
because all other path will add value to 5 and not decrease it
more over with Negative weights it will fall into infinite loop
In Unweighted graph
Dijkstra Algo will fall into loop if it has negative weight
In Directed graph
Dijkstra Algo will give RIGHT ANSWER except in case of Negative Cycle
Who says Dijkstra never visit a node more than once are 500% wrong
also who says Dijkstra can't work with negative weight are wrong