Shortest path between two given nodes in unweighted graph/tree

Question

I am looking for an algorithm to determine the shortest path between two nodes in an unweighted graph by using the adjacency matrix . I know Dijkstra and Bellman - Ford, but none that found are specific to determine the shortest path between two given nodes.

Any help is greatly apreciated

Answer 1

One simple option is to run a breadth-first search starting at the first node until the second node is found. If you store parent pointers for each node, you can then read off the path from the first node to the second. Moreover, this runs in linear time in the size of the graph.

Hope this helps!