Course Schedule

There are a total of n courses you have to take, labeled from 0 to n - 1.

Some courses may have prerequisites, for example to take course 0 you have to first take course 1, which is expressed as a pair: [0,1]

Given the total number of courses and a list of prerequisite pairs, is it possible for you to finish all courses?

For example:

2, [[1,0]]

There are a total of 2 courses to take. To take course 1 you should have finished course 0. So it is possible.

2, [[1,0],[0,1]]

There are a total of 2 courses to take. To take course 1 you should have finished course 0, and to take course 0 you should also have finished course 1. So it is impossible.

Hints:

1. This problem is equivalent to finding if a cycle exists in a directed graph. If a cycle exists, no topological ordering exists and therefore it will be impossible to take all courses.
2. There are several ways to represent a graph. For example, the input prerequisites is a graph represented by a list of edges. Is this graph representation appropriate?
3. Topological Sort via DFS - A great video tutorial (21 minutes) on Coursera explaining the basic concepts of Topological Sort.
4. Topological sort could also be done via BFS.

建立一个indegree的表，然后扫这个表，如果indegree为0，那么把这个node加入result，并更新他的所有子节点入度。

    public boolean canFinish(int numCourses, int[][] prerequisites) {
        int[] indegree = new int[numCourses];
        int n = prerequisites.length;
        if (n == 0) {
            return true;
        }
        for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) {
            indegree[prerequisites[i][0]]++;
        }
        int count = numCourses;
        while (count > 0) {
            boolean flag = false;
            for(int i = 0; i < numCourses; i++) {
                if (indegree[i] == 0) {
                    indegree[i] = -1;
                    count--;
                    for (int j = 0; j < n; j++) {
                        if (prerequisites[j][1] == i) {
                            indegree[prerequisites[j][0]]--;
                        }
                    }
                    flag = true;
                }
            }
            if (!flag) {
                break;
            }
        }
        return count == 0;
    }

上面的做法比较费时间，O(V^2E), 找到入度为0的需要O(V)，然后依次减少child node的degree。这个操作需要V次。

下面用空间换时间，先建立一个入度的map，找到indegree为0的节点后，因为我们已经知道了他的子节点list，直接更新所有node. 这样的时间为O(V+E)

    public boolean canFinish(int numCourses, int[][] prerequisites) {
        int[] indegree = new int[numCourses];
        int n = prerequisites.length;
        if (n == 0) {
            return true;
        }
        Map<Integer, List<Integer>> nodes = new HashMap<Integer, List<Integer>>();
        for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) {
            int indegreeNode = prerequisites[i][0];
            int outdegreeNode = prerequisites[i][1];
            indegree[indegreeNode]++;
            if (nodes.get(outdegreeNode) == null) {
                nodes.put(outdegreeNode, new ArrayList<Integer>());
            }
            nodes.get(outdegreeNode).add(indegreeNode);
        }
        int count = numCourses;
        Queue<Integer> queue = new LinkedList<Integer>();
        for (int i = 0; i < numCourses; i++) {
            if (indegree[i] == 0) {
                indegree[i]--;
                queue.offer(i);
                count--;
            }
        }
        while (!queue.isEmpty()) {
            int zeroDegree = queue.poll();
            List<Integer> list = nodes.get(zeroDegree);
            if (list != null) {
                for (int i = 0; i < list.size(); i++) {
                    int num = list.get(i);
                    indegree[num]--;
                    if (indegree[num] == 0) {
                        indegree[num]--;
                        queue.offer(num);
                        count--;
                    }
                }
            }
        }
        return count == 0;
    }