what is Dijkstra's algorithm?

Dijkstra's algorithm, named after its discoverer, Dutch computer scientist Edsger Dijkstra, is an algorithm that solves the single-source shortest path problem for a directed graph with nonnegative edge weights.

For example, if the vertices of the graph represent cities and edge weights represent driving distances between pairs of cities connected by a direct road, Dijkstra's algorithm can be used to find the shortest route between two cities.

The input of the algorithm consists of a weighted directed graph G and a source vertex s in G. We will denote V the set of all vertices in the graph G. Each edge of the graph is an ordered pair of vertices (u,v) representing a connection from vertex u to vertex v. The set of all edges is denoted E. Weights of edges are given by a weight function w: E → [0, ∞]; therefore w(u,v) is the non-negative cost of moving from vertex u to vertex v. The cost of an edge can be thought of as (a generalization of) the distance between those two vertices. The cost of a path between two vertices is the sum of costs of the edges in that path. For a given pair of vertices s and t in V, the algorithm finds the path from s to t with lowest cost (i.e. the shortest path). It can also be used for finding costs of shortest paths from a single vertex s to all other vertices in the graph.

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