what is the difference between Cycle and circuit

Question

I have confusion that what is the differnce between the two ?

Cycle and circuit so please make me sure by diagrams if possible.

what i have in mind is that the cycle is always in undirected graph the circuit is always a directed graph. please correct me if i am wrong ?

@ Adel Khayata Do you have answer for this question ? – Sss Sep 23 '13 at 11:05 — Sss, Sep 23 '13 at 11:05

score 5 · Answer 1 · edited Nov 22 '16 at 13:58

5

A cycle is a closed path. A path is a walk with no repeated vertices. Circuits refer to the closed trails. Trails refer to a walk where no edge is repeated.

edited Nov 22 '16 at 13:58

mixel

25,177
13
126
165

answered Aug 15 '14 at 07:52

user3943895

51
1
1

1

Illustration of the difference is given here: http://www.edmath.org/MATtours/discrete/concepts/cwalk.html – Ilham May 22 '15 at 18:06

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 27 '13 at 23:46

@blgt There is some difference , I found it finally.

The circuit is on directed graph and the cycle may be undirected graph. whereas the path can be differntiated by cycle and circuit by the point that path start from u vertex and may end at v vertex.(starting point and end point are not same) and it may even repeat the same vertex again but not the case with circuit. see this link for more information- http://www.esiee.fr/~coustyj/EnglishMorphoGraph/L3.pdf (i prefer to give the link in order to make it helpful for future refrence)

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 27 '13 at 10:45

There's no official and/or widely accepted definition of a difference between cycle and circuit.

Most literature I've seen uses them interchangeably; if it doesn't: you should expect it to define this somewhere in its glossary of terms (if it has one).

what is the difference between Cycle and circuit

3 Answers3