Dijkstra

With a name inspired by Dijkstra's algorithm, whose goal is to find the shortest path between two any nodes within a graph, Dijkstra is a feather-light Java-based application that puts a few popular search algorithms at your disposal, giving you the possibility to explore and test them. It comes in handy for Computer Science students.

Provided that you have Java installed on your PC, you don't need to set up anything else. This means that you can save the .jar executable file anywhere on the disk and just click it to run, as well as save it to a pen drive to be able to directly launch it on any PC (at school, for instance). More importantly, it doesn't integrate new entries in the Windows registry or Start menu, thus leaving no traces behind after its removal.

Represented by a small window with a clear-cut structure, the interface contains a single button and a drop-down list with all available algorithms to select: depth first, breadth first, Dijkstra, A*, depth first NR, alpha-beta depth first, and Bellman-Ford.

All you have to do is pick an algorithm and run it to view its visual representation in a graph embedded in the main app window. It shows the goal node as "F", while the start node is the one closest to the top-left corner of the graph. At every step, the graph highlights the content of the queue.

There are no other notable options provided by this piece of software. Unfortunately, it doesn't integrate an option for copying the applet to the Clipboard as an image, printing it, or exporting it to file.

It didn't put a strain on the overall performance of the machine during our tests, as it consumed low CPU and memory. The utility didn't hang, crash or display error messages either. However, we have noticed that it's not compatible with the latest Java version. We should also keep in mind that Dijkstra hasn't been updated for a long time.