COMPILER DESIGN

(CA513)

TOPOLOGICAL
ORDERING

Efforts By: Guided By:

Osman Rabbani
MCA/45045/21 Prof. Aruna
Malik
 Applications of Graphs: Topological
Sorting

• Topological order
– A list of vertices in a directed graph without cycles such
that vertex x precedes vertex y if there is a directed edge
from x to y in the graph
– There may be several topological orders in a given graph
• Topological sorting
– Arranging the vertices into a topological order

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 Topological Sort
• Directed graph G.
• Rule: if there is an edge u -> v, then u must come
before v.
• Ex: A B
G
F C
I H
A B
E D
G
F C
I H

E D
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 Intuition
• Cycles make topological sort impossible.
• Select any node with no in-edges
– print it
– delete it
– and delete all the edges leaving it
• Repeat
• What if there are some nodes left over?
• Implementation? Efficiency?

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 Implementation
• Start with a list of nodes with in-degree = 0
• Select any edge from list
– mark as deleted
– mark all outgoing edges as deleted
– update in-degree of the destinations of those edges
• If any drops below zero, add to the list
• Running time?

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 Topological Sorting

Figure 13.14
A directed graph without

cycles

Figure 13.15
The graph in Figure 13-14
arranged according to the
topological orders a) a, g, d,
b, e, c, f and b) a, b, g, d, e, f,
c

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 Topological Sorting
• Simple algorithms for finding a topological order
– topSort1
• Find a vertex that has no successor
• Remove from the graph that vertex and all edges that lead to it, and add
the vertex to the beginning of a list of vertices
• Add each subsequent vertex that has no successor to the beginning of the
list
• When the graph is empty, the list of vertices will be in topological order

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 Topological Sorting
• Simple algorithms for finding a topological order
(Continued)
– topSort2
• A modification of the iterative DFS algorithm
• Strategy
– Push all vertices that have no predecessor onto a stack
– Each time you pop a vertex from the stack, add it to the beginning
of a list of vertices
– When the traversal ends, the list of vertices will be in topological
order

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 Implementation
• Start with a list of nodes with in-degree = 0
• Select any edge from list
– mark as deleted
– mark all outgoing edges as deleted
– update in-degree of the destinations of those edges
• If any drops below zero, add to the list
• Running time? In all, algorithm does work:
– O(|V|) to construct initial list
– Every edge marked “deleted” at most once: O(|E|) total
– Every node marked “deleted” at most once: O(|V|) total
– So linear time overall (in |E| and |V|)

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 Why should we care?
• Shortest path problem in directed, acyclic graph
– Called a DAG for short
• General problem:
– Given a DAG input G with weights on edges
– Find shortest paths from source A to every other vertex

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 References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topological_sorting
https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/topological-sorting/
https://www.javatpoint.com/topological-sorting
https://www.hackerearth.com/practice/algorithms/grap
hs/topological-sort/tutorial/

TextBook: Aho A.V., Sheth R. I. and Ullman J.D. “Compilers Principles

Techniques and Tools”, Pearson Education
THANK YOU