Question

This seems like it would be fairly simple, but I’ve been unable to find anything about how to do this on the web. I’m writing the steps for Kruskal’s algorithm. I need to create a list of edges sorted by weight, with labels above the weight referencing the edges, something like this:

a-b b-c c-e
 1   3   5  ...

Design and Analysis of Algorithms by Anany Levitin uses similar formatting on p. 316. If there are no other options, I suppose verbatim might work, though I was hoping to make it look a little nicer. Any recommendations?

Answer 1

As someone suggested, TikZ might be overkill, but it does work.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\draw (0,0) node[anchor=east]{a} -- (0.4,0) node[anchor=west]{b};
\draw (0.2,0) node[anchor=north]{1};
\draw (2,0) node[anchor=east]{b} -- (2.4,0) node[anchor=west]{c};
\draw (2.2,0) node[anchor=north]{3};
\draw (4,0) node[anchor=east]{c} -- (4.4,0) node[anchor=west]{e};
\draw (4.2,0) node[anchor=north]{5};
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

EDIT: Actually, this is probably simpler and does what you want:

\[ \left. \begin{array}{ccc}
   {a-b \atop 1} & {b-c \atop 3} & {c-e \atop 5}
   \end{array} \right. \]

You can compare for yourself: tikzedgeweights.pdf