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Breadth-first search (BFS) is a method for exploring a tree or graph. In a BFS, you first explore all the nodes one step away, then all the nodes two steps away, etc.
Breadth-first search is like throwing a stone in the center of a pond. The nodes you explore "ripple out" from the starting point.
Here's a how a BFS would traverse this tree, starting with the root:
We'd visit all the immediate children (all the nodes that're one step away from our starting node):
Then we'd move on to all those nodes' children (all the nodes that're two steps away from our starting node):
And so on:
Until we reach the end.
Breadth-first search is often compared with depth-first search.
Advantages:
- A BFS will find the shortest path between the starting point and any other reachable node. A depth-first search will not necessarily find the shortest path.
Disadvantages
- A BFS on a binary tree generally requires more memory than a DFS.
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