Book Image

Learning JavaScript Data Structures and Algorithms - Second Edition

By : Loiane Groner
Book Image

Learning JavaScript Data Structures and Algorithms - Second Edition

By: Loiane Groner

Overview of this book

This book begins by covering basics of the JavaScript language and introducing ECMAScript 7, before gradually moving on to the current implementations of ECMAScript 6. You will gain an in-depth knowledge of how hash tables and set data structure functions, as well as how trees and hash maps can be used to search files in a HD or represent a database. This book is an accessible route deeper into JavaScript. Graphs being one of the most complex data structures you’ll encounter, we’ll also give you a better understanding of why and how graphs are largely used in GPS navigation systems in social networks. Toward the end of the book, you’ll discover how all the theories presented by this book can be applied in real-world solutions while working on your own computer networks and Facebook searches.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Learning JavaScript Data Structures and Algorithms - Second Edition
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface

Minimum spanning tree (MST)


The minimum spanning tree (MST) problem is very common in network designing. Imagine you have a business with several offices and want to connect the office's phone lines with each other with a minimum total cost to save money. Which is the best way of doing this?

This can also be applied to the island bridge problem. Consider you have an n number of islands and want to build bridges to connect each of them with a minimum cost.

Both the preceding problems can be solved with an MST algorithm, in which each office or island can be represented as a vertex of a graph, and the edges represent the cost. Here, we have an example of a graph where the thicker edges are a solution to MST:

There are two main algorithms to find the minimal spanning trees: Prim's algorithm and Kruskal's algorithm, which you will learn in the following topics.

Prim's algorithm

Prim's algorithm is a greedy algorithm that finds an MST problem for a connected weighted undirected graph. It finds a...