backtracking

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)The act of one who, or that which, backtracks; a retracing of one's steps.
2. (countable, uncountable)The usage of a runway as a taxiway, especially at private strips and smaller airports.
3. (countable, uncountable)The act of building all possible solutions to a problem incrementally, abandoning any candidate solution if it cannot lead to a valid solution.

   “backtracking algorithm”

   “Backtracking is used to solve problems in which a sequence of objects is chosen from a specific set so that the sequence satisfies some criterion. The classic example of the use of backtracking is the n-Queens problem.”

   “This grammar only uses tokens and rules, so there is no backtracking involved, and the grammar is a predictive parser. This is fairly typical. Many grammars work fine without backtracking, or with backtracking in just a few places.”

verb

1. (form-of, gerund, participle, present)present participle and gerund of backtrack