Generalized topological sorting in linear time

  • Authors:
  • Torben Hagerup;Martin Maas

  • Affiliations:
  • Max-Planck-Institut für Informatik, Im Stadtwald, D-66123 Saarbrücken, Germany;CAP debis, Division Industrie, Erich-Herion-Straße 13, D-70736 Fellbach, Germany

  • Venue:
  • Nordic Journal of Computing
  • Year:
  • 1994

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Abstract

The generalized topological sorting problem takes as input a positive integer k and a directed, acyclic graph with some vertices labeled by positive integers, and the goal is to label the remaining vertices by positive integers in such a way that each edge leads from a lower-labeled vertex to a higher-labeled vertex, and such that the set of labels used is exactly {1,...,k}. Given a generalized topological sorting problem, we want to compute a solution, if one exists, and also to test the uniqueness of a given solution. The best previous algorithm for the generalized topological sorting problem computes a solution, if one exists, and tests its uniqueness in O(n log log n + m) time on input graphs with n vertices and m edges. We describe improved algorithms that solve both problems in linear time O(n + m).