Is there any library in R to work with graphs (find shortest path and so on)?

Question

Hi! I know that R is statistical pkg, but probably there is library to work with graphs and find shortest path btw 2 nodes.

PS actually, I've found igraph and e1071, which one is better? Thank you

Answer 1

Sure, there's a Task View that gathers a fair number of the graph-related Packages.

Among the Packages there, igraph, for instance, has graph-theoretic functions such as you have mentioned in your Q.

igraph versus e1071--well, igraph is coded in C; it's very fast. I have not compared it with e1071 though.

What i do know is that these two packages differ a great deal in scope: e1071 is a collection of functions (at least originally) for a University course (i believe the unusual name 'e1071' refers to the course identifier), while. e1071 indeed contains a graph theoretic functions, but the majority of the Package's functions are directed to machine learning.

iGraph on the other hand is a dedicated graph theoretic Package. iGraph has many more dedicated functions, as well as constructors for a number of common graph types.