Path cover

About: Path cover is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 229 publications have been published within this topic receiving 2750 citations.

On Path Cover Problems in Digraphs and Applications to Program Testing

Abstract: In this paper various path cover problems, arising in program testing, are discussed. Dilworth's theorem for acyclic digraphs is generalized. Two methods for fmding a minimum set of paths (minimum path cover) that covers the vertices (or the edges) of a digraph are given. To model interactions among code segments, the notions of required pairs and required paths are introduced. It is shown that rmding a minimum path cover for a set of required pairs is NP-hard. An efficient algorithm is given for findng a minimum path cover for a set of required paths. Other constrained path problems are contsidered and their complexities are discussed.

Automatic generation of path covers based on the control flow analysis of computer programs

Abstract: Branch testing a program involves generating a set of paths that will cover every arc in the program flowgraph, called a path cover, and finding a set of program inputs that will execute every path in the path cover. This paper presents a generalized algorithm that finds a path cover for a given program flowgraph. The analysis is conducted on a reduced flowgraph, called a ddgraph, and uses graph theoretic principles differently than previous approaches. In particular, the relations of dominance and implication which form two trees of the arcs of the ddgraph are exploited. These relations make it possible to identify a subset of ddgraph arcs, called unconstrained arcs, having the property that a set of paths exercising all the unconstrained arcs also cover all the arcs in the ddgraph. In fact, the algorithm has been designed to cover all the unconstrained arcs of a given ddgraph: the paths are derived one at a time, each path covering at least one as yet uncovered unconstrained arc. The greatest merits of the algorithm are its simplicity and its flexibility. It consists in just visiting recursively in combination the dominator and the implied trees, and is flexible in the sense that it can derive a path cover to satisfy different requirements, according to the strategy adopted for the selection of the unconstrained arc to be covered at each recursive iteration. This feature of the algorithm can be employed to address the problem of infeasible paths, by adopting the most suitable selection strategy for the problem at hand. Embedding of the algorithm into a software analysis and testing tool is recommended. >

8/7-approximation algorithm for (1,2)-TSP

Abstract: We design a polynomial time 8/7-approximation algorithm for the Traveling Salesman Problem in which all distances are either one or two. This improves over the best known approximation factor for that problem. As a direct application we get a 7/6-approximation algorithm for the Maximum Path Cover Problem, similarly improving upon the best known approximation factor for that problem. The result depends on a new method of consecutive path cover improvements and on a new analysis of certain related color alternating paths. This method could be of independent interest.

Many-to-many disjoint path covers in hypercube-like interconnection networks with faulty elements

Abstract: A many-to-many k-disjoint path cover (k-DPC) of a graph G is a set of k disjoint paths joining k distinct source-sink pairs in which each vertex of G is covered by a path. We deal with the graph G/sub 0/ /spl oplus/ G/sub 1/ obtained from connecting two graphs G/sub 0/ and G/sub 1/ with n vertices each by n pairwise nonadjacent edges joining vertices in G/sub 0/ and vertices in G/sub 1/. Many interconnection networks such as hypercube-like interconnection networks can be represented in the form of G/sub 0/ /spl oplus/ G/sub 1/ connecting two lower dimensional networks G/sub 0/ and G/sub 1/. In the presence of faulty vertices and/or edges, we investigate many-to-many disjoint path coverability of G/sub 0/ /spl oplus/ G/sub 1/ and (G/sub 0/ /spl oplus/ G/sub 1/) /spl oplus/ (G/sub 2/ /spl oplus/ G/sub 3/ ), provided some conditions on the Hamiltonicity and disjoint path coverability of each graph G/sub i/ are satisfied, 0 /spl les/ i /spl les/ 3. We apply our main results to recursive circulant G(2/sup m/, 4) and a subclass of hypercube-like interconnection networks, called restricted HL-graphs. The subclasses includes twisted cubes, crossed cubes, multiply twisted cubes, Mobius cubes, Mcubes, and generalized twisted cubes. We show that all these networks of degree m with f or less faulty elements have a many-to-many k-DPC joining any k distinct source-sink pairs for any k /spl ges/ 1 and f /spl ges/ 0 such that f+2k /spl les/ m - 1.