1 results about "Cycle detection" patented technology

In computer science, cycle detection or cycle finding is the algorithmic problem of finding a cycle in a sequence of iterated function values. For any function f that maps a finite set S to itself, and any initial value x₀ in S, the sequence of iterated function values x₀, x₁=f(x₀), x₂=f(x₁), …, xᵢ=f(xᵢ₋₁), … must eventually use the same value twice: there must be some pair of distinct indices i and j such that xᵢ = xⱼ.