Computer program for coloring networks with a given number of colors

(University of Exeter, Jan Sieber)

• Below is a piece of computer program that performs automatically what a human would do manually when coloring a network.
  Suppose we have colored nodes up to number n-1, so we are trying to find a color for node number n. We check, which colors the neighbors have, choose the next available color for node n, and move on to node n+1. If no color is available, we move back to node n-1 and see if we had another color choice there. Click 'Execute code' to load this function.
  Some other functions that are useful and needed are loaded below (feel free to ignore or explore). Click 'Execute code' to load these extra functions.
• I have prepared two ways to type in how the network looks. The first way is as a sequence of number node number pairs connected with a hyphen (or minus). This sequence needs to be enclosed by three doublequote marks as the text after links= below. Click 'Execute code' to run the code.
• An alternative way is to input the network directly. Be aware that this requires curly braces, colons, square brackets and commas in the right places. For example, if node 1 is linked to nodes 2, 3 and 4, one has to write 1:[2,3,4].