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# articulation_points¶

articulation_points(G)[source]

Return a generator of articulation points, or cut vertices, of a graph.

An articulation point or cut vertex is any node whose removal (along with all its incident edges) increases the number of connected components of a graph. An undirected connected graph without articulation points is biconnected. Articulation points belong to more than one biconnected component of a graph.

Notice that by convention a dyad is considered a biconnected component.

Parameters: G (NetworkX Graph) – An undirected graph. articulation points – generator of nodes generator NetworkXNotImplemented – If the input graph is not undirected.

Examples

>>> G = nx.barbell_graph(4, 2)
>>> print(nx.is_biconnected(G))
False
>>> len(list(nx.articulation_points(G)))
4
>>> print(nx.is_biconnected(G))
True
>>> len(list(nx.articulation_points(G)))
0


Notes

The algorithm to find articulation points and biconnected components is implemented using a non-recursive depth-first-search (DFS) that keeps track of the highest level that back edges reach in the DFS tree. A node is an articulation point if, and only if, there exists a subtree rooted at such that there is no back edge from any successor of that links to a predecessor of in the DFS tree. By keeping track of all the edges traversed by the DFS we can obtain the biconnected components because all edges of a bicomponent will be traversed consecutively between articulation points.

References

 [1] Hopcroft, J.; Tarjan, R. (1973). “Efficient algorithms for graph manipulation”. Communications of the ACM 16: 372–378. doi:10.1145/362248.362272