visitnode

Visitnode is a term used in graph theory and related software engineering contexts to denote a node that has been encountered by a traversal or processing routine. The concept serves as a marker within algorithms that navigate graphs, trees, or networks, helping to prevent repeated work and to record progress. In common traversal schemes such as depth-first search and breadth-first search, each node is marked as visited when it is first encountered; the set of visit nodes is used to guide continuation, detect cycles, and compute properties like path length or component structure.

In data modeling, a visit node can also represent an instance of interest in analytics or event processing. Here, a node corresponds to an entity such as a page, page element, or sensor, and a visit to that node is logged with attributes like timestamp, duration, and context. This view supports tasks such as session reconstruction, timing analysis, and path visualization.

Implementation patterns vary. Typical approaches store a visited flag or color state on nodes, or maintain an external hash set of visited identifiers. When combined with the Visitor pattern, a visit operation can be defined that processes visit nodes without altering the underlying graph structure.

Applications span path finding, network analysis, web crawling, recommendation systems, and workflow management. The clarity of the visitnode concept helps separate traversal state from node data, enabling reusable algorithms and clearer analytics.