Data structure

• Use a HashMap to implement an "Adjacency List' to represent the graph.
• The advantages are easy to build and easy to use.
• Please ignore the Node.java, it is not being used.

The searching algorithm

• I have implemented 2 searching methods. Obviously, I finished the 1-way search, and make sure it works, then enhance it to build the Bi-directional search.
• Basically, the searching is implementing the Breadth First Search (BFS) algorithm using a Queue.

How to run

Here is a sample command to run the program:

java -cp Connection-1.0.0-jar-with-dependencies.jar com.ikas.cmd.Connected cities.txt Boston Ypsilanti

Or import the project into Eclipse and run in the IDE.

Binary distribution

All the jar files can be found in the dist folder.

Internet References:

• https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/breadth-first-search-or-bfs-for-a-graph/
• https://adrianmejia.com/blog/2018/05/14/data-structures-for-beginners-graphs-time-complexity-tutorial/#Breadth-first-search-BFS-Graph-search

Books:

• Cracking the Coding Interview, Gayle Laakmann McDowell