From 5d9297f6452c889aa599ce6feb0b50287456ab3a Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: "codeflash-ai[bot]"
 <148906541+codeflash-ai[bot]@users.noreply.github.com>
Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2025 01:48:49 +0000
Subject: [PATCH] Optimize Graph.topologicalSort
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The optimization achieves a **28% speedup** by replacing the inefficient `stack.insert(0, v)` operation with `stack.append(v)` followed by a single `stack.reverse()` at the end.

**Key optimization**: The original code used `stack.insert(0, v)` in `topologicalSortUtil`, which is an O(N) operation because it requires shifting all existing elements in the list. This happened for every node processed during the DFS traversal. The optimized version uses `stack.append(v)` (O(1)) and reverses the entire stack once at the end (O(N)).

**Why this is faster**: For a graph with N nodes, the original approach performs N insertions at index 0, resulting in O(N²) time complexity for stack operations alone. The optimized approach performs N constant-time appends plus one O(N) reverse, reducing the stack operations to O(N) total.

**Performance impact analysis**: The line profiler shows the critical improvement - the `stack.insert(0, v)` line took 3.885e+06 nanoseconds (347.3 ns per hit) in the original, while `stack.append(v)` takes only 2.802e+06 nanoseconds (250.5 ns per hit) in the optimized version. The single `stack.reverse()` operation is negligible at 17,000 nanoseconds total.

**Test case benefits**: The optimization shows increasing benefits with graph size:
- Small graphs (3 nodes): Minimal improvement (~1-8%)
- Large sparse graphs (1000 nodes): ~15-18% improvement
- Dense graphs (100 nodes with many edges): **25.8% improvement**

This demonstrates that the optimization scales well with problem size, making it particularly valuable for larger topological sorting tasks.
---
 code_to_optimize/topological_sort.py | 10 ++++++----
 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)

diff --git a/code_to_optimize/topological_sort.py b/code_to_optimize/topological_sort.py
index 6d3fa457a..c433ae528 100644
--- a/code_to_optimize/topological_sort.py
+++ b/code_to_optimize/topological_sort.py
@@ -1,5 +1,6 @@
 import uuid
 from collections import defaultdict
+from typing import List
 
 
 class Graph:
@@ -14,18 +15,19 @@ def topologicalSortUtil(self, v, visited, stack):
         visited[v] = True
 
         for i in self.graph[v]:
-            if visited[i] == False:
+            if not visited[i]:
                 self.topologicalSortUtil(i, visited, stack)
 
-        stack.insert(0, v)
+        stack.append(v)  # Appending is O(1); we'll reverse later
 
     def topologicalSort(self):
         visited = [False] * self.V
-        stack = []
+        stack: List[int] = []
         sorting_id = uuid.uuid4()
 
         for i in range(self.V):
-            if visited[i] == False:
+            if not visited[i]:
                 self.topologicalSortUtil(i, visited, stack)
 
+        stack.reverse()  # Reverse once at the end for O(N) instead of repeated O(N) .insert(0, ...)
         return stack, str(sorting_id)