Symmetries of combinatorial objects are known to complicate search
algorithms, but such obstacles can often be removed by detecting symmetries
early and discarding symmetric subproblems. Canonical labeling of combinatorial
objects facilitates easy equivalence checking through quick matching. All
existing canonical labeling software also finds symmetries, but the fastest
symmetry-finding software does not perform canonical labeling. In this work, we
contrast the two problems and dissect typical algorithms to identify their
similarities and differences. We then develop a novel approach to canonical
labeling where symmetries are found first and then used to speed up the
canonical labeling algorithms. Empirical results show that this approach
outperforms state-of-the-art canonical labelers.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures, 1 table, Turing-10