29、A* Performance and Heuristics

A* Performance and Heuristics

1 A* Algorithm Overview

A (pronounced “A star”) is a powerful search algorithm widely used in pathfinding and graph traversal. The algorithm aims to find the shortest path between a start node and a goal node in a weighted graph. A combines the strengths of both Breadth-First Search (BFS) and Depth-First Search (DFS) by using a heuristic function to guide the search process.

Key Features of A*

• Best-first search : A* expands the most promising node first.
• Optimistic heuristic : The heuristic function must be admissible, meaning it never overestimates the cost to reach the goal.
• Efficiency : A* can significantly red