Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-year-1-of-the-computer-science-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2017/functional-programming-design-and-analysis-of-algorithms/6/c/solution
Past exam of the year 1 of the computer science course of the University of Oxford 2017 Functional programming, design and analysis of algorithms 6 c Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-31
Because the vertex set is finite, at least one vertex occurs infinitely often, so is nonempty. Let belong to this set. After any chosen visit to , a later visit to exists; the intervening edges give a directed walk from to . After that visit to , a later visit to also exists, giving a walk in the other direction. Removing repeated portions gives directed paths if desired.
Thus every pair in is mutually reachable and belongs to the same strongly connected component. This proves the claimed inclusion, which need not be equality: an infinite walk can repeatedly follow one cycle while omitting other vertices in its component. This is the recurrence-set part of the infinite walk criterion in a finite directed graph.
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