Interview Camp 

 
Technique: Detecting Cycles using DFS 

Level: Medium 

Given a graph, find if there is a cycle. 

 

 
 
Questions to Clarify: 
Q. Is this a directed or undirected graph? 
A. It is a directed graph. 

Solution: 
We do a ​Depth First Search ​(DFS). During the DFS, we visit nodes. This involves going through the 
node's neighbors.  
 
While visiting a node​ ​N​, let's say we find that one of ​N​'s neighbors - ​P​ - is already in the ​VISITING​ state. 
This means ​P​ is in the path from root to ​N​, which means we have found a cycle. ​P​ and ​N​ are part of this 
cycle. 
 
Note that we look for neighbors in the ​VISITING​ state and not ​VISITED​ state. This is because if a 
neighbor ​X​ has been visited already, we have processed all the nodes from ​X​, and there is no path 
from ​X​ to ​N​. 

 
 
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Interview Camp 

Pseudocode: 

// modify the dfsVisit function to check neighbors in VISITING state

hasCycleDfsVisit(Node, Target)
Node.state = VISITING

For each neighbor:

if Neighbor is UNVISITED
perform dfsVisit on Neighbor
if dfsVisit returned true, cycle found, return true and exit
else if Neighbor is VISITING
cycle found, return true and exit

Node.state = VISITED
Target not found, return false

Test Cases: 
Edge Cases: Empty graph 
Base Cases: 1 node, 2 nodes connected/disconnected 
Regular Cases: Has cycle, No cycle 

Time Complexity: O(V + E) 

Space Complexity: O(V) 

 
 
 
 
 

 
 
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Interview Camp 

public static boolean hasCycle(Graph graph) {

for(Node node : graph.getNodes()) {
if (node.getState() == State.UNVISITED && hasCycleDfsVisit(node))
return true;
}
return false;
}

public static boolean hasCycleDfsVisit(Node node) {

node.setState(State.VISITING);

for (Node neighbor: node.getNeighbors()) {

if (neighbor.getState() == State.UNVISITED &&
hasCycleDfsVisit(neighbor))
return true;
else if (neighbor.getState() == State.VISITING)
return true;
}

node.setState(State.VISITED);
return false;
}

/*
* Helper Code. Ask interviewer before implementing.
*/
public enum State {
UNVISITED,
VISITING,
VISITED;
}

public class Graph {

List<Node> nodes;

public Graph(List<Node> nodes) {

super();
this.nodes = nodes;
}

public void addNode(Node node) {

nodes.add(node);
}

public List<Node> getNodes() {

return nodes;
}

 
 
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Interview Camp 

public class Node {

List<Node> neighbors;
int data;
State state;

public Node(int data) {

super();
this.data = data;
state = State.UNVISITED;
neighbors = new ArrayList<Node>();
}

public int getData() {

return data;
}

public void setData(int data) {

this.data = data;
}

public void setState(State state) {

this.state = state;
}

public State getState() {

return state;
}

public void addNeighbor(Node node) {

neighbors.add(node);
}

public List<Node> getNeighbors() {

return neighbors;
}
}
 

 
 
© ​2017 Interview Camp (interviewcamp.io)