How do I stop the breadth-first search using Boost Graph Library when using a custom visitor?

Question

Say I found the node that meets my criteria and I need to stop the search.

Answer 1

The solution is to throw an exception of your known type - then catch it on the calling side. From the FAQ:

How do I perform an early exit from an algorithm such as BFS?

Create a visitor that throws an exception when you want to cut off the search, then put your call to breadth_first_search inside of an appropriate try/catch block. This strikes many programmers as a misuse of exceptions, however, much thought was put into the decision to have exceptions has the preferred way to exit early. See boost email discussions for more details.