Re: Random Naughts and Crosses, Problem Search

From:

Patricia Shanahan <pats@acm.org>

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.java.help

Date:

Sat, 09 Feb 2008 19:12:20 -0800

Message-ID:

<13qsqsl209utme3@corp.supernews.com>

Daniel Pitts wrote:

Patricia Shanahan wrote:

Mark Space wrote:

TheBigPJ wrote:

the large comparision if statement, but no one has a suitable
alternative.

Yeah that "if" is just nasty. I think you even missed one victory
condition. I count seven and there should be eight I think. Replace
it with a method that uses a loop to iterate over possible victory
conditions.

Also, consider making board a byte[3][3], reflecting the two-dimensional
geometry of the real board.

Actually, I would replace it with an 2d enum array.
enum Stroke {
  EMPTY,
  X,
  O;
}
Or better yet, use a map instead:

final class Position {
   final int x;
   final int y;
   public Position(int x, int y) {
     this.x = x;
     this.y = y;
   }
   public long hashCode() { return x + y * 37; }
   public boolean equals(Object o) { return o instanceof Position &&
((Position)o).x == x && ((Position)o).y == y; }
}

In this situation, with sizes that have been fixed for centuries, in
what way is a map better than an array?

Patricia