Why it matters

Ford-Fulkerson foundational for network flow. Powers bipartite matching, min-cut.

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The architecture

Find augmenting path.

Push flow along path.

Repeat until no path.

Ford-FulkersonFind pathresidual graphPush flowalong pathRepeatuntil no pathFord-Fulkerson 1956; Edmonds-Karp BFS variant O(V E^2)
Ford-Fulkerson.
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How it works end to end

Edmonds-Karp BFS variant.

Dinic's algorithm faster.

Push-relabel modern.