Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Let  
 $G$  be a graph. The minimum number of colors needed to color the edges of  
 $G$  is called the chromatic index of  
 $G$  and is denoted by  
 $X'\left( G \right)$ . It is well known that  
 $\Delta \left( G \right)\,\le \,\mathcal{X}'\left( G \right)\,\le \Delta \left( G \right)\,+\,1$ , for any graph  
 $G$ , where  
 $\Delta \left( G \right)$  denotes the maximum degree of  
 $G$ . A graph  
 $G$  is said to be class 1 if  
 ${\mathcal{X}}'\left( G \right)\,=\,\Delta \left( G \right)$  and class 2 if  
 ${\mathcal{X}}'\left( G \right)\,=\,\Delta \left( G \right)\,+\,1$ . Also,  
 ${{G}_{\Delta }}$  is the induced subgraph on all vertices of degree  
 $\Delta \left( G \right)$ . Let  
 $f:\,V\left( G \right)\,\to \mathbb{N}$  be a function. An  
$f$  -coloring of a graph  
 $G$  is a coloring of the edges of  
 $E\left( G \right)$  such that each color appears at each vertex  
 $v\,\in \,V\left( G \right)$  at most  
 $f\left( v \right)$  times. The minimum number of colors needed to  
 $f$  -color  
 $G$  is called the  
$f$  -chromatic index of  
 $G$  and is denoted by  
 ${{{\mathcal{X}}'}_{f}}\left( G \right)$ . It was shown that for every graph  
 $G,\,{{\Delta }_{f}}\,\left( G \right)\,\le \,{{\mathcal{X}}^{\prime }}_{f}\left( G \right)\,\le \,{{\Delta }_{f}}\,\left( G \right)\,+\,1$ , where  
 ${{\Delta }_{f}}\left( G \right)\,=\,{{\max }_{v\in \left( G \right)}}\,\left\lceil {{{d}_{G}}\left( v \right)}/{f\left( v \right)}\; \right\rceil $ . A graph  
 $G$  is said to be  
 $f$  -class 1 if  
 ${{\mathcal{X}}^{\prime }}_{f}\left( G \right)\,=\,{{\Delta }_{f}}\left( G \right)$ , and  
 $f$  -class 2, otherwise. Also,  
 ${{G}_{{{\Delta }_{f}}}}$  is the induced subgraph of  
 $G$  on  
 $\left\{ v\,\in \,V\left( G \right)\,:\,{{{d}_{G}}\left( V \right)}/{f\left( v \right)}\;\,=\,{{\Delta }_{f}}\left( G \right) \right\}$ . Hilton and Zhao showed that if  
 ${{G}_{\Delta }}$  has maximum degree two and  
 $G$  is class 2, then  
 $G$  is critical,  
 ${{G}_{\Delta }}$  is a disjoint union of cycles and  
 $\delta \left( G \right)\,=\,\Delta \left( G \right)-1$ , where  
 $\delta \left( G \right)$  denotes the minimum degree of  
 $G$ , respectively. In this paper, we generalize this theorem to  
 $f$  -coloring of graphs. Also, we determine the  
 $f$  -chromatic index of a connected graph  
 $G$  with  
 $\left| {{G}_{{{\Delta }_{f}}}} \right|\,\le \,4$ .