Problem:
There are a total of n courses you have to take, labeled from 0
to n - 1
.
Some courses may have prerequisites, for example to take course 0 you have to first take course 1, which is expressed as a pair: [0,1]
Given the total number of courses and a list of prerequisite pairs, is it possible for you to finish all courses?
For example:
2, [[1,0]]
There are a total of 2 courses to take. To take course 1 you should have finished course 0. So it is possible.
2, [[1,0],[0,1]]
There are a total of 2 courses to take. To take course 1 you should have finished course 0, and to take course 0 you should also have finished course 1. So it is impossible.
Note:
The input prerequisites is a graph represented by a list of edges, not adjacency matrices. Read more about how a graph is represented.
- This problem is equivalent to finding if a cycle exists in a directed graph. If a cycle exists, no topological ordering exists and therefore it will be impossible to take all courses.
- Topological Sort via DFS - A great video tutorial (21 minutes) on Coursera explaining the basic concepts of Topological Sort.
- Topological sort could also be done via BFS.
Analysis:
Solutions:
C++:
bool canFinish(int numCourses, vector<pair<int, int> >& prerequisites) {
if(numCourses == 0)
return false;
if(numCourses == 1)
return true;
int dep[numCourses] = {0};
bool pre[numCourses][numCourses];
for(int i = 0; i < numCourses; ++i) {
for(int j = 0; j < numCourses; ++j) {
pre[i][j] = false;
}
}
int edge_num = 0;
for(int i = 0; i < prerequisites.size(); ++i) {
if(!pre[prerequisites[i].second][prerequisites[i].first]) {
++dep[prerequisites[i].first];
pre[prerequisites[i].second][prerequisites[i].first] = true;
++edge_num;
}
}
queue<int> no_pre_courses;
for(int i = 0; i < numCourses; ++i) {
if(dep[i] == 0)
no_pre_courses.push(i);
}
if(no_pre_courses.empty())
return false;
while(!no_pre_courses.empty()) {
int course = no_pre_courses.front();
no_pre_courses.pop();
for(int i = 0; i < numCourses; ++i) {
if(pre[course][i]) {
if(--dep[i] == 0)
no_pre_courses.push(i);
pre[course][i] = false;
--edge_num;
}
}
}
return edge_num == 0;
}
Java
:
Python: