Can Dijkstra's Single Source Shortest Path Algorithm detect an infinite cycle in a graph?

Question

So I came to this beautiful problem that asks you to write a program that finds whether a negative infinity shortest path exists in a directed graph. (Also can be thought of as finding whether a "negative cycle" exists in the graph). Here's a link for the problem:

http://uva.onlinejudge.org/index.php?option=com_onlinejudge&Itemid=8&page=show_problem&problem=499

I successfully solved the problem by running Bellman Ford Algorithm twice by starting with any source in the graph. The second time I run the algorithm, I check if a node can be relaxed. If so, then there is definitely a negative cycle in the graph. Below is my C++ code:

#include<iostream>
#include<vector>
#include<algorithm>

using namespace std;

int main()
{
    int test;
    cin>>test;

    for(int T=0; T<test; T++)
    {

        int node, E;

        cin>>node>>E; 

        int **edge= new int *[E];
        for(int i=0; i<E; i++)
        {
            edge[i]= new int [3];
            cin>>edge[i][0]>>edge[i][1]>>edge[i][2];
        }

        int *d= new int [node];

        bool possible=false;

        for(int i=0; i<node;i++)
        {
            d[i]= 999999999;
        }

        d[node-1]=0;

        for(int i=0; i<node-1; i++)
        {

            for(int j=0; j<E; j++)
            {
                if(d[edge[j][1]]>d[edge[j][0]]+edge[j][2])
                    d[edge[j][1]]=d[edge[j][0]]+edge[j][2];
            }
        }

        // time to judge!
        for(int i=0; i<node-1; i++)
        {

            for(int j=0; j<E; j++)
            {
                if(d[edge[j][1]]>d[edge[j][0]]+edge[j][2])
                {
                    possible=true;
                    break;
                }

            } 

            if(possible)
                break;

        }

        if(possible)
            cout<<"possible"<<endl;
        else
            cout<<"not possible"<<endl;

    }
}

A professor told me once that Dijkstra's shortest path algorithm cannot find such negative cycle, but he did not justify it. I actually doubt this claim.

My question is, can Dijktstra's single source shortest path algorithm detect that negative cycle?

Of course, I can try Dijkstra's and check whether it will work, but I was excited to share this idea with you.

Answer 1

No algorithm neither Dijkstra's nor Bellman-Ford nor Floyd-Warshall work on graphs with negative cycle but the latter two can detect one whereas Dijkstra's cannot because Dijkstra's is greedy whereas others use dynamic programming. Moreover Dijkstra doesn't work with negative weights even without negative cycles.