http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=201809

Please excuse me if this has already been posted -- I searched Perlmonks for mention of this program, and I was surprised that it's not here (surely it must be here!). IF it is here, then my apologies; and in fact, if 'youse guys' can maybe turn this exercise into a GOLF I think the results might be very cool.

Anyway, I implemented CGoL using the old version 5.6.1 on our Unix boxes, but testing it with PuTTY I see that the `clear` command doesn't seem to work (strange...).

The code initializes the matrix from __DATA__, but you can delete the stuff after __DATA__ and just hand it an input pattern from <>.

One way to speed up this code is to allow two more states, called 'newborn' and 'dying'. Newborns, belonging to a transitional state, are not counted as 'alive' (so there are no spurious additional births), and dying cells can be marked but not yet removed from the board (so they can still contribute toward the overall game state for the current epoch). Finally, once all births and deaths are thus marked, another loop can iterate over the birthlist, setting their states to 'alive', and loop over the deathlist, setting their states to 'dead'. All that to avoid rebuilding the grid each time... is it worth the extra effort?
#!/usr/bin/perl -w use strict; =head1 life.pl name : life.pl desc : Conway's Game of Life syntax : life.pl [delay] SYNTAX This script implements CGoL. There is one optional runtime argument; namely, the delay between iterations ('epochs'). THEORY CGoL essentially is a cellular automaton. The playing grid is a 2D matrix of cells with 2 possible states: alive or dead. Cell state is dependent upon the 8 neighbors adjacent to the cell, and the following three rules: (1) A cell with exactly 3 live neighbors becomes alive. (2) A live cell with 2 or 3 live neighbors remains alive. (3) All other cells die. INITIAL GRID The starting pattern is specified in the __DATA__ section at the end of this script. If there are no lines after __DATA__, then input is read from stdin. The length of the first line determines the number of columns in the grid, and of course the number of lines determine the number of rows in the grid. Initial 'live' cells are denoted by x's; initial dead cells are anything else (internally, dead cells are identified by the space character, but the logic is tailored to treat anything 'not-alive' as dead). GRID CAVEAT The grid wraps around. This means cells on the boundary can affect other cells on opposite boundaries. =cut my $delay = shift || 1; my $alive = 'x'; my $dead = ' '; my @grid = (); my $rows = 0; my $cols = 0; # # Read the grid... # my @in = <DATA>; @in = <> unless @in; foreach( @in ) { chomp; my @cells = split( '', $_ ); my $col = 0; foreach( @cells ) { $grid[ $rows ][ $col ] = $_; $col++; } $cols = $col if $col > $cols; $rows++; } # # Now fill in the grid... # for( my $r=0; $r<$rows; $r++ ) { for( my $c=0; $c<$cols; $c++ ) { $grid[ $r ][ $c ] = $dead unless $grid[ $r ][ $c ]; } } print "$rows Rows, $cols Cols\n"; my $epochs = 0; # # Now loop forever! # { `clear`; &show; $epochs++; sleep $delay; my @newgrid = &copy( @grid ); for( my $r=0; $r<$rows; $r++ ) { for( my $c=0; $c<$cols; $c++ ) { my $cell = $grid[ $r ][ $c ]; my $neighbors = &countNeighbors( $r, $c ); # print "($r,$c) $cell => $neighbors\n"; # # If a cell has exactly 3 live neighbors, # then this is a live cell. # $newgrid[ $r ][ $c ] = $alive if $neighbors == 3; # # If a cell has 2 or 3 live neighbors, # then this cell remains alive if it is alive. # next if $neighbors == 2 || $neighbors == 3; # # rule: all other cells die. # $newgrid[ $r ][ $c ] = $dead; } } @grid = @newgrid; redo; } sub show { foreach( @grid ) { if ( $_ ) { my @row = @{$_}; print join( "", @row ); } print "\n"; } my $dashes = '-' x ($cols/2 - length( $epochs )); print "$dashes $epochs $dashes\n"; } sub copy { my @grid = @_; my @newgrid = (); for( my $r=0; $r<$rows; $r++ ) { for( my $c=0; $c<$cols; $c++ ) { $newgrid[ $r ][ $c ] = $grid[ $r ][ $c ]; } } return @newgrid; } sub countNeighbors { my ($r, $c) = @_; my $count = 0; $count += isAlive( $r-1, $c-1 ); $count += isAlive( $r-1, $c ); $count += isAlive( $r-1, $c+1 ); $count += isAlive( $r, $c-1 ); $count += isAlive( $r, $c+1 ); $count += isAlive( $r+1, $c-1 ); $count += isAlive( $r+1, $c ); $count += isAlive( $r+1, $c+1 ); return $count; } sub isAlive { my ($r, $c) = @_; return 1 if $grid[ $r ][ $c ] && $grid[ $r ][ $c ] eq $alive; return 0; } __DATA__ -first row- x xxx x last row

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Conway's Game of Life
by davorg (Chancellor) on Oct 01, 2002 at 08:21 UTC

    Damian has a module called DFA::Cellular which can be used to create GoL programs - he uses it in his Life, The Universe and Everything talk. Sadly it doesn't seem to be on the CPAN yet.

    --
    <http://www.dave.org.uk>

    "The first rule of Perl club is you do not talk about Perl club."
    -- Chip Salzenberg

Re: Conway's Game of Life
by fglock (Vicar) on Sep 30, 2002 at 20:00 UTC

    The terminal emulator works with "control characters"

    You have to  print the output of the "clear" command, so that the terminal emulator "see" the control chars:

     print `clear`;  # this should clear the screen
Re: Conway's Game of Life
by rje (Deacon) on Sep 30, 2002 at 20:04 UTC
    Of course, there's the CPAN module Game::Life. I should have searched there too. It makes different assumptions; for instance, it requires an actual perl array or arrays for input, whereas my script breaks up lines read from a handle. But his code is nicely modularized in a ... well, in a module.

    Sorry about that, guys.

    rje