doc/gwrappers.dox
author athos
Wed, 23 Mar 2005 12:12:42 +0000
changeset 1248 ca613a9e3567
parent 1164 80bb73097736
child 1252 4fee8e9d9014
permissions -rw-r--r--
Bug fix in lp_base.h.
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/**
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   @defgroup gwrappers Wrapper Classes for Graphs
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   \brief This group contains several wrapper classes for graphs
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   @ingroup graphs
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   The main parts of LEMON are the different graph structures, 
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   generic graph algorithms, graph concepts which couple these, and 
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   graph wrappers. While the previous ones are more or less clear, the 
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   latter notion needs further explanation.
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   Graph wrappers are graph classes which serve for considering graph 
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   structures in different ways. A short example makes the notion much 
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   clearer. 
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   Suppose that we have an instance \c g of a directed graph
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   type say \c ListGraph and an algorithm 
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   \code template<typename Graph> int algorithm(const Graph&); \endcode 
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   is needed to run on the reversely oriented graph. 
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   It may be expensive (in time or in memory usage) to copy 
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   \c g with the reverse orientation. 
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   Thus, a wrapper class
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   \code template<typename Graph> class RevGraphWrapper; \endcode is used. 
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   The code looks as follows
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   \code
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   ListGraph g;
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   RevGraphWrapper<ListGraph> rgw(g);
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   int result=algorithm(rgw);
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   \endcode
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   After running the algorithm, the original graph \c g 
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   remains untouched. Thus the graph wrapper used above is to consider the 
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   original graph with reverse orientation. 
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   This techniques gives rise to an elegant code, and 
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   based on stable graph wrappers, complex algorithms can be 
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   implemented easily. 
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   In flow, circulation and bipartite matching problems, the residual 
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   graph is of particular importance. Combining a wrapper implementing 
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   this, shortest path algorithms and minimum mean cycle algorithms, 
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   a range of weighted and cardinality optimization algorithms can be 
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   obtained. For lack of space, for other examples, 
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   the interested user is referred to the detailed documentation of graph 
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   wrappers. 
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   The behavior of graph wrappers can be very different. Some of them keep 
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   capabilities of the original graph while in other cases this would be 
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   meaningless. This means that the concepts that they are a model of depend 
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   on the graph wrapper, and the wrapped graph(s). 
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   If an edge of \c rgw is deleted, this is carried out by 
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   deleting the corresponding edge of \c g. But for a residual 
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   graph, this operation has no sense. 
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   Let we stand one more example here to simplify your work. 
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   wrapper class
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   \code template<typename Graph> class RevGraphWrapper; \endcode 
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   has constructor 
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   <tt> RevGraphWrapper(Graph& _g)</tt>. 
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   This means that in a situation, 
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   when a <tt> const ListGraph& </tt> reference to a graph is given, 
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   then it have to be instantiated with <tt>Graph=const ListGraph</tt>.
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   \code
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   int algorithm1(const ListGraph& g) {
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   RevGraphWrapper<const ListGraph> rgw(g);
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   return algorithm2(rgw);
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   }
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   \endcode
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*/