Here are some comments on how it works:
The code clears all the lines except for the last one (clean) the simple way: if there is a light, click underneath. The last line (or, better to say, broken line, i.e. the last line plus the remaining half of the previous one) is then solved half-randomly. At the beginning, I cache how clicking on the top line influences the last line, but only for one click on the line (i.e. I only know what the last line will be after having one light lit). Therefore, I have to click randomly until I get a cached position that I can solve. This works well for size 14, but the time doubles for each +2 in size, so size 20 is already too slow. Caching more positions could be added easily (like clicking two times), but I am not sure how much time it would take to cache all possible combinations on the first line.
Because the order of clicks is not important, I keep a separate map of the board with 0 for the even clicks and 1 for the odd ones. This separate board is the output of the program. | [reply] [Watch: Dir/Any] [d/l] |
sub show {
my $board = shift;
print "\e[H";
for my $row (@$board) {
return unless defined $row;
print map $_ ? '*' : defined $_ ? '.' : '', @$row;
print "\e[K\n";
}
print "\e[J";
use Time::HiRes "sleep";
sleep(6e-3);
} # show
sub toggle {
my ($board, $x, $y) = @_;
my $old = $board->[$y][$x];
return unless defined $old;
$board->[$y][$x] = $old eq 1 ? 0 : 1;
} # toggle
and now I can see the lights being chased down to the bottom of the board. Looks nice.
| [reply] [Watch: Dir/Any] [d/l] |
Yes, in fact, I did something similar for debugging :-)
| [reply] [Watch: Dir/Any] |