Breadth-First Search | Dataford Interview Questions

Implement breadth-first search on a graph and return the order in which nodes are visited starting from a given node.

The graph is represented as an adjacency list: a dictionary where each key is a node and its value is a list of neighboring nodes. Visit neighbors in the order they appear in the list. If the start node is not in the graph, return an empty list.

Formal Specification

Write a function bfs(graph, start) that returns a list of nodes in BFS visitation order.

graph: dict mapping each node to a list of adjacent nodes
start: the starting node
Return: list of nodes visited in BFS order

Use a queue for traversal and avoid visiting the same node more than once.

Constraints

0 <= len(graph) <= 10^4
Total number of edges across all adjacency lists is at most 10^5
Node values are hashable
The graph may contain cycles and disconnected components

Function Signature

def bfs(graph, start):

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