UVa 10973 - Triangle Counting

Summary
Given a simple undirected graph $$G = (V,E)$$, how many triangles does it contain? A triangle (or a 3-clique) is a set of three distinct vertices, such that there is an edge between every pair of them.

Explanation
Each triangle can be uniquely identified with an ordered triple $$(x,y,z)$$, in which $$x < y < z$$.

An algorithm with running time $$O(VE)$$ (where $$V$$ is the number of vertices, and $$E$$ is the number of edges) for enumerating all triangles is presented below. The algorithm uses adjacency lists to represent the graph. As an optimization, it stores the graph as a set of directed edges $$(x,y)$$, in which $$x < y$$.

for x=1..n, adj[x] is the set: { y: y>x and (x,y) is in E }. flag[1..n] is a boolean array, with all elements initialized to 'false'

count = 0

for x = 1 to n:	for each y in adj[x]: flag[y] = true for each y in adj[x]: for each z in adj[y]: if flag[z] then: yield (x,y,z) count++ for each y in adj[x]: flag[y] = false

Input
1 4 6 1 2 2 3 3 1 1 4 2 4 3 4

Output
4