BFS的一个重要优势是，它可以用于寻找未加权图中任意两个节点之间的最短路径。 然而，我们不能用DFS来做同样的事情。

来自 http://www.programmerinterview.com/index.php/data-structures/dfs-vs-bfs/

一个BFS的例子

这里有一个BFS的例子。这类似于级别顺序树遍历，其中我们将使用迭代方法的队列(大多数递归将最终使用DFS)。数字表示BFS中节点被访问的顺序:

在深度优先搜索中，从根开始，尽可能地跟随树的一个分支，直到找到要查找的节点或找到叶节点(没有子节点)。如果您选中了一个叶节点，那么您将继续在最近的具有未探索的子节点的父节点上搜索。

DFS的一个例子

下面是一个DFS的示例。我认为二叉树中的后序遍历将首先从叶层开始工作。数字表示DFS中节点被访问的顺序:

DFS和BFS的区别

比较BFS和DFS, DFS的最大优势是它的内存需求比BFS低得多，因为它不需要在每一层存储所有的子指针。根据数据和您正在寻找的内容，DFS或BFS都可能是有利的。

For example, given a family tree if one were looking for someone on the tree who’s still alive, then it would be safe to assume that person would be on the bottom of the tree. This means that a BFS would take a very long time to reach that last level. A DFS, however, would find the goal faster. But, if one were looking for a family member who died a very long time ago, then that person would be closer to the top of the tree. Then, a BFS would usually be faster than a DFS. So, the advantages of either vary depending on the data and what you’re looking for.

另一个例子是Facebook;关于朋友的朋友的建议。我们需要直接的朋友建议我们在哪里可以使用BFS。可能是寻找最短路径或检测周期(使用递归)，我们可以使用DFS。

作为程序员，当您处理这个问题时，有一个因素很突出:如果使用递归，那么深度优先搜索更容易实现，因为您不需要维护包含尚未探索的节点的额外数据结构。

如果你在节点中存储“已经访问过”的信息，下面是深度优先搜索非面向图:

def dfs(origin):                               # DFS from origin:
    origin.visited = True                      # Mark the origin as visited
    for neighbor in origin.neighbors:          # Loop over the neighbors
        if not neighbor.visited: dfs(neighbor) # Visit each neighbor if not already visited

如果将“已经访问过”的信息存储在单独的数据结构中:

def dfs(node, visited):                        # DFS from origin, with already-visited set:
    visited.add(node)                          # Mark the origin as visited
    for neighbor in node.neighbors:            # Loop over the neighbors
        if not neighbor in visited:            # If the neighbor hasn't been visited yet,
            dfs(neighbor, visited)             # then visit the neighbor
dfs(origin, set())

与此形成对比的是广度优先搜索，在广度优先搜索中，无论如何都需要为尚未访问的节点列表维护单独的数据结构。

一些算法依赖于DFS(或BFS)的特定属性来工作。例如，用于查找2连接组件的Hopcroft和Tarjan算法利用了这样一个事实，即DFS遇到的每个已经访问过的节点都位于从根节点到当前探索的节点的路径上。

For BFS, we can consider Facebook example. We receive suggestion to add friends from the FB profile from other other friends profile. Suppose A->B, while B->E and B->F, so A will get suggestion for E And F. They must be using BFS to read till second level. DFS is more based on scenarios where we want to forecast something based on data we have from source to destination. As mentioned already about chess or sudoku. Once thing I have different here is, I believe DFS should be used for shortest path because DFS will cover the whole path first then we can decide the best. But as BFS will use greedy's approach so might be it looks like its the shortest path, but the final result might differ. Let me know whether my understanding is wrong.

当树的深度可以变化时，宽度优先搜索通常是最好的方法，并且您只需要搜索树的一部分来寻找解决方案。例如，寻找从起始值到最终值的最短路径是使用BFS的好地方。

深度优先搜索通常用于需要搜索整个树的情况。它比BFS更容易实现(使用递归)，并且需要更少的状态:BFS需要存储整个“边界”，DFS只需要存储当前元素的父节点列表。