How does Dijkstra's Algorithm and A-Star compare?

Question

Dijkstra is a special case for A* (when the heuristics is zero).

Dijkstra:

It has one cost function, which is real cost value from source to each node: f(x)=g(x).
It finds the shortest path from source to every other node by considering only real cost.

A* search:

It has two cost function.

1. g(x): same as Dijkstra. The real cost to reach a node x.
2. h(x): approximate cost from node x to goal node. It is a heuristic function. This heuristic function should never overestimate the cost. That means, the real cost to reach goal node from node x should be greater than or equal h(x). It is called admissible heuristic.

The total cost of each node is calculated by f(x)=g(x)+h(x)

A* search only expands a node if it seems promising. It only focuses to reach the goal node from the current node, not to reach every other nodes. It is optimal, if the heuristic function is admissible.

So if your heuristic function is good to approximate the future cost, than you will need to explore a lot less nodes than Dijkstra.

What previous poster said, plus because Dijkstra has no heuristic and at each step picks edges with smallest cost it tends to "cover" more of your graph. Because of that Dijkstra could be more useful than A*. Good example is when you have several candidate target nodes, but you don't know, which one is closest (in A* case you would have to run it multiple times: once for each candidate node).

Dijkstra's algorithm would never be used for pathfinding. Using A* is a no-brainer if you can come up with a decent heuristic (usually easy for games, especially in 2D worlds). Depending on the search space, Iterative Deepening A* is sometimes preferable because it uses less memory.

Dijkstra is a special case for A*.

Dijkstra finds the minimum costs from the starting node to all others. A* finds the minimum cost from the start node to the goal node.

Dijkstra's algorithm would never be used for path finding. Using A* one can come up with a decent heuristic. Depending on the search space, iterative A* is is preferable because it uses less memory.

The code for Dijkstra's algorithm is:

// A C / C++ program for Dijkstra's single source shortest path algorithm.
// The program is for adjacency matrix representation of the graph

#include <stdio.h>
#include <limits.h>

// Number of vertices in the graph
#define V 9

// A utility function to find the vertex with minimum distance value, from
// the set of vertices not yet included in shortest path tree
int minDistance(int dist[], bool sptSet[])
{
 // Initialize min value
 int min = INT_MAX, min_index;

  for (int v = 0; v < V; v++)
   if (sptSet[v] == false && dist[v] <= min)
     min = dist[v], min_index = v;

   return min_index;
}

 int printSolution(int dist[], int n)
 {
  printf("Vertex   Distance from Source\n");
  for (int i = 0; i < V; i++)
     printf("%d \t\t %d\n", i, dist[i]);
  }

void dijkstra(int graph[V][V], int src)
{
 int dist[V];     // The output array.  dist[i] will hold the shortest
                  // distance from src to i

 bool sptSet[V]; // sptSet[i] will true if vertex i is included in shortest
                 // path tree or shortest distance from src to i is finalized

 // Initialize all distances as INFINITE and stpSet[] as false
 for (int i = 0; i < V; i++)
    dist[i] = INT_MAX, sptSet[i] = false;

 // Distance of source vertex from itself is always 0
 dist[src] = 0;

 // Find shortest path for all vertices
 for (int count = 0; count < V-1; count++)
 {
   // Pick the minimum distance vertex from the set of vertices not
   // yet processed. u is always equal to src in first iteration.
   int u = minDistance(dist, sptSet);

   // Mark the picked vertex as processed
   sptSet[u] = true;

   // Update dist value of the adjacent vertices of the picked vertex.
   for (int v = 0; v < V; v++)

     // Update dist[v] only if is not in sptSet, there is an edge from 
     // u to v, and total weight of path from src to  v through u is 
     // smaller than current value of dist[v]
     if (!sptSet[v] && graph[u][v] && dist[u] != INT_MAX 
                                   && dist[u]+graph[u][v] < dist[v])
        dist[v] = dist[u] + graph[u][v];
 }

 // print the constructed distance array
 printSolution(dist, V);
 }

// driver program to test above function
int main()
 {
 /* Let us create the example graph discussed above */
 int graph[V][V] = {{0, 4, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 8, 0},
                  {4, 0, 8, 0, 0, 0, 0, 11, 0},
                  {0, 8, 0, 7, 0, 4, 0, 0, 2},
                  {0, 0, 7, 0, 9, 14, 0, 0, 0},
                  {0, 0, 0, 9, 0, 10, 0, 0, 0},
                  {0, 0, 4, 14, 10, 0, 2, 0, 0},
                  {0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 2, 0, 1, 6},
                  {8, 11, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 7},
                  {0, 0, 2, 0, 0, 0, 6, 7, 0}
                 };

dijkstra(graph, 0);

return 0;
}

The code for A* algorithm is:

class Node:
def __init__(self,value,point):
    self.value = value
    self.point = point
    self.parent = None
    self.H = 0
    self.G = 0
def move_cost(self,other):
    return 0 if self.value == '.' else 1

def children(point,grid):
x,y = point.point
links = [grid[d[0]][d[1]] for d in [(x-1, y),(x,y - 1),(x,y + 1),(x+1,y)]]
return [link for link in links if link.value != '%']
def manhattan(point,point2):
return abs(point.point[0] - point2.point[0]) + abs(point.point[1]-point2.point[0])
def aStar(start, goal, grid):
#The open and closed sets
openset = set()
closedset = set()
#Current point is the starting point
current = start
#Add the starting point to the open set
openset.add(current)
#While the open set is not empty
while openset:
    #Find the item in the open set with the lowest G + H score
    current = min(openset, key=lambda o:o.G + o.H)
    #If it is the item we want, retrace the path and return it
    if current == goal:
        path = []
        while current.parent:
            path.append(current)
            current = current.parent
        path.append(current)
        return path[::-1]
    #Remove the item from the open set
    openset.remove(current)
    #Add it to the closed set
    closedset.add(current)
    #Loop through the node's children/siblings
    for node in children(current,grid):
        #If it is already in the closed set, skip it
        if node in closedset:
            continue
        #Otherwise if it is already in the open set
        if node in openset:
            #Check if we beat the G score 
            new_g = current.G + current.move_cost(node)
            if node.G > new_g:
                #If so, update the node to have a new parent
                node.G = new_g
                node.parent = current
        else:
            #If it isn't in the open set, calculate the G and H score for the node
            node.G = current.G + current.move_cost(node)
            node.H = manhattan(node, goal)
            #Set the parent to our current item
            node.parent = current
            #Add it to the set
            openset.add(node)
    #Throw an exception if there is no path
    raise ValueError('No Path Found')
def next_move(pacman,food,grid):
#Convert all the points to instances of Node
for x in xrange(len(grid)):
    for y in xrange(len(grid[x])):
        grid[x][y] = Node(grid[x][y],(x,y))
#Get the path
path = aStar(grid[pacman[0]][pacman[1]],grid[food[0]][food[1]],grid)
#Output the path
print len(path) - 1
for node in path:
    x, y = node.point
    print x, y
pacman_x, pacman_y = [ int(i) for i in raw_input().strip().split() ]
food_x, food_y = [ int(i) for i in raw_input().strip().split() ]
x,y = [ int(i) for i in raw_input().strip().split() ]

grid = []
for i in xrange(0, x):
grid.append(list(raw_input().strip()))

next_move((pacman_x, pacman_y),(food_x, food_y), grid)

You can consider A* a guided version of Dijkstra. Meaning, instead of exploring all the nodes, you will use a heuristic to pick a direction.

To put it more concretely, if you're implementing the algorithms with a priority queue then the priority of the node you're visiting will be a function of the cost (previous nodes cost + cost to get here) and the heuristic estimate from here to the goal. While in Dijkstra, the priority is only influenced by the actual cost to nodes. In either case, the stop criterion is reaching the goal.

Dijkstra finds the minimum costs from the starting node to all others. A* finds the minimum cost from the start node to the goal node.

Therefore it would seem that Dijkstra would be less efficient when all you need is the minimum distance from one node to another.