Finding all the elementary circuits of a directed graph ------------------------------------------------------- Algorithm by D. B. Johnson [1] Finding all the elementary circuits of a directed graph. D. B. Johnson, SIAM Journal on Computing 4, no. 1, 77-84, 1975. http://dx.doi.org/10.1137/0204007 Using the networkx package and a modified version of its simple_cycles() function. The algorithm was adapted so that it would not arbitrarily order vertices. Three lines now contain a sorted() statement. Usage ----- echo "0 1\n0 2\n1 0\n1 3\n2 0\n3 0\n3 1\n3 2" | python cycles.py 4 First argument is the number of vertices. Ordered pairs of space separated vertices are given via standard input and make up the directed edges of the graph. DOT file input -------------- For simplicity, there is no DOT file parser included but the following allows to create a suitable argument string and standard input for simple DOT graphs. Given a DOT file of a simple (no labels, colors, styles, only pairs of vertices...) directed graph, the following lines generate the number of vertices as well as the edge list expected on standard input. sed -n -e '/^\s*[0-9]\+;$/p' graph.dot | wc -l sed -n -e 's/^\s*\([0-9]\) -> \([0-9]\);$/\1 \2/p' graph.dot The above lines work on DOT files like the following: digraph G { 0; 1; 2; 0 -> 1; 0 -> 2; 1 -> 0; 2 -> 0; 2 -> 1; } They would produce the following output: 3 0 1 0 2 1 0 2 0 2 1