From: Shlomi Fish
Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2012 4:02 AM
To: fc-solve-discuss_at_yahoogroups.com
Cc: gary_at_numin8r.us
Subject: Re: Usable Solution vs. Any Solution
Hi Gary,
Freecell Solver has an option to display the cards inside each Freecell stack
properly aligned inside columns instead of text lines. This is the default
behaviour in order to maintain backwards compatibility. Here is an example
position from «pi-make-microsoft-freecell-board -t 24 | fc-solve -t»:
<<<<<<
3D 8H JH 9H H-5 C-A D-A S-4
--- --- --- ---
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
4C KS QC 2D 7H 9D 7S
2C QH 9S KD JS 8S 6C
9C 6H TH KH 7D
8C 5C TC TS 6S
QS TD KC 5D
JD 8D QD
7C JC
6D
5S
4D
3C
>>>>
The reason what I prefer adding the optional (but recommended) -p flag (for
"Parseable" or "Perl" or whatever) is because Freecell stacks that are placed
in lines are much easier to parse, and to search for using other UNIX (or
UNIX-originated) text-processing tools, that make use of regular expressions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expression
Another advantage is that those positions can be input as is to the solver,
which accepts input with stacks represented as lines.
While they may be a little harder for a human to read, I got used to that very
quickly, and I think they outweigh the disadvantages.
-----------------------
RESPONSE: Your example above would be more understandable if along
with the layout, there were some indication of the Game # and the moves
that got to that position.
My philosophy has always been that a little extra effort should be made by
the software engineer to accommodate the user. That’s why I advocate
columns rather than rows.
------------------------
>
> 7H 6H 9C TH 6C TC 2H 9D 3D 3C 2S AH
> 6S 5S QS JH KS QC KC QH KD QD
> 7D JC 4H 8C 6D 5D
> 4C JD KH 5H 8D
> 4D TS 4S 5C 7S
> 3S 9H 3H JS
> 8S TD
> 9S
> 8H
> 7C
> GAME #6276 is solved partially as follows: {17 1 1 0 3 4 1252 1253 2 2 0 0 62
> 62 2000 110} 32 35 15 67 47 1a 13 1h 1b 21
> 24 27 24 a2 8h 8a 87[27]14 b1
> 71 72 72 7b 5c 5d 87 32 65 47
> 45 Solved
I don't understand the notation. Why do you have so many Freecell stacks? There
should only be 8. What are the numbers inside the curly braces ({ .... }). What
is the [27] inside the square brackets?
-----------------------
RESPONSE:
The extra columns (I thought my explanation made it clear, but I guess not)
are for the top cards of the home cells (first row) and the cards in the freecells
(second row). These two sets of 4 cards are appended to the first to rows of
cards in the 8 stacks. A better notation might be like yours, to put them onto
an initial line of their own.
The curly braces (see original text, just below) enclose parameters
to FFA to allow it to reset some needed internal variables. They are not part of
the notation, and do not need to be included for my Solver to parse the layout.
The [27] is simply one of the moves of the solution. It is the next move. The
move that continues from the given layout.
---------------------
Well, it still suffers from several of the faults I noted in my original rant
against the standard notation, and requires an explanation for laymen
(including me) to parse.
-------------------------
RESPONSE: Everything requires an explanation to parse. Are the faults
it suffers from related to ease of parsing? If not, perhaps you could use
the example and indicate its faults explicitly.
--------------------------
Regards,
Shlomi Fish
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Received on Thu Nov 29 2012 - 10:15:04 IST