Kshort
Kshort, often seen as K-shortest paths, refers to the problem in graph theory of finding the K distinct s–t paths with the smallest total weight in a weighted graph. The term is used in routing, network design, and transportation planning to provide multiple candidate routes ranked by efficiency or cost. Variants distinguish whether paths must be simple (no repeated vertices) or may contain cycles.
In the simple-path variant, the objective is to enumerate K loopless s–t paths in nondecreasing order of
Practical implementations rely on subroutines such as Dijkstra’s algorithm for nonnegative weights or Bellman-Ford when negative
Applications of Kshort include providing multiple viable routes in GPS navigation, designing redundant communication paths to