Berge graphs with chordless cycles of bounded length

A graph is called weakly triangulated if it contains no chordless cycle on five or more vertices (also called hole) and no complement of such a cycle (also called antihole). Equivalently, we can define weakly triangulated graphs as antihole-free graphs whose induced cycles are isomorphic either to C₃ or to C₄. The perfection of weakly triangulated graphs was proved by Hayward Hayward, J Combin Theory B. 39 (1985), 200–208] and generated intense studies to efficiently solve, for these graphs, the classical NP-complete problems that become polynomial on perfect graphs. If we replace, in the definition above, the C₄ by an arbitrary C_p (p even, at least equal to 6), we obtain new classes of graphs whose perfection is shown in this article. In fact, we prove a more general result: for any even integer p ≥ 6, the graphs whose cycles are isomorphic either to C₃ or to one of C_p, C_p+2, …, C_{2p 6} are perfect. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Graph Theory 32: 73–79, 1999