COIN-OR::LEMON - Graph Library

source: lemon-0.x/doc/gwrappers.dox @ 1370:76a3f46d361c

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1/**
2   @defgroup gwrappers Wrapper Classes for Graphs
3   \brief This group contains several wrapper classes for graphs
4   @ingroup graphs
5   
6   The main parts of LEMON are the different graph structures,
7   generic graph algorithms, graph concepts which couple these, and
8   graph wrappers. While the previous notions are more or less clear, the
9   latter one needs further explanation.
10   Graph wrappers are graph classes which serve for considering graph
11   structures in different ways.
12
13   A short example makes this much
14   clearer.
15   Suppose that we have an instance \c g of a directed graph
16   type say ListGraph and an algorithm
17   \code template<typename Graph> int algorithm(const Graph&); \endcode
18   is needed to run on the reversed oriented graph.
19   It may be expensive (in time or in memory usage) to copy
20   \c g with the reversed orientation.
21   In this case, a wrapper class is used, which
22   (according to LEMON graph concepts) works as a graph.
23   The wrapper uses
24   the original graph structure and graph operations when methods of the
25   reversed oriented graph are called.
26   This means that the wrapper have minor memory usage,
27   and do not perform sophisticated algorithmic actions.
28   The purpose of it is to give a tool for the cases when
29   a graph have to be used in a specific alteration.
30   If this alteration is obtained by a usual construction
31   like filtering the edge-set or considering a new orientation, then
32   a wrapper is worthwhile to use.
33   To come back to the reversed oriented graph, in this situation
34   \code template<typename Graph> class RevGraphWrapper; \endcode
35   template class can be used.
36   The code looks as follows
37   \code
38   ListGraph g;
39   RevGraphWrapper<ListGraph> rgw(g);
40   int result=algorithm(rgw);
41   \endcode
42   After running the algorithm, the original graph \c g
43   is untouched.
44   This techniques gives rise to an elegant code, and
45   based on stable graph wrappers, complex algorithms can be
46   implemented easily.
47
48   In flow, circulation and bipartite matching problems, the residual
49   graph is of particular importance. Combining a wrapper implementing
50   this, shortest path algorithms and minimum mean cycle algorithms,
51   a range of weighted and cardinality optimization algorithms can be
52   obtained.
53   For other examples,
54   the interested user is referred to the detailed documentation of
55   particular wrappers.
56
57   The behavior of graph wrappers can be very different. Some of them keep
58   capabilities of the original graph while in other cases this would be
59   meaningless. This means that the concepts that they are models of depend
60   on the graph wrapper, and the wrapped graph(s).
61   If an edge of \c rgw is deleted, this is carried out by
62   deleting the corresponding edge of \c g, thus the wrapper modifies the
63   original graph.
64   But for a residual
65   graph, this operation has no sense.
66   Let us stand one more example here to simplify your work.
67   RevGraphWrapper has constructor
68   \code
69   RevGraphWrapper(Graph& _g);
70   \endcode
71   This means that in a situation,
72   when a <tt> const ListGraph& </tt> reference to a graph is given,
73   then it have to be instantiated with <tt>Graph=const ListGraph</tt>.
74   \code
75   int algorithm1(const ListGraph& g) {
76   RevGraphWrapper<const ListGraph> rgw(g);
77   return algorithm2(rgw);
78   }
79   \endcode
80*/
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