kkck: A solver for Kriss Kross puzzles

The main logic is straightforward. The Puzzle() constructor reads the puzzle file and performs the initialization phase; see Section 14, “Puzzle.__init__(): Constructor”. See also Section 9, “usage(): Show command line argument usage” and Section 10, “fatal(): Write a message and stop”.

#================================================================
# Functions and classes
#----------------------------------------------------------------


# - - -   m a i n

def main():
    '''Kriss Kross puzzle solver, main procedure.

      [ sys.argv names one readable, valid Kriss Kross puzzle file ->
          sys.stdout  +:=  (solution(s) to the puzzle, if any) +
                           (number of solutions)
        else ->
          sys.stderr  +:=  error message(s) ]
    '''
    print "===== %s %s =====" % (PROGRAM_NAME, EXTERNAL_VERSION)

    #-- 1 --
    # [ if sys.argv names one readable file ->
    #     inFile  :=  that file, opened for reading
    #   else ->
    #     sys.stderr  +:=  error message(s)
    #     stop execution ]
    argList = sys.argv[1:]
    if len(argList) == 1:
        try:
            inFileName = argList[0]
            inFile = file ( inFileName )
        except IOError, detail:
            fatal ( "Couldn't open input file '%s': %s" %
                    (inFileName, detail) )
    else:
        usage () 

See Section 13, “class Puzzle: The top-level container” and Section 14, “Puzzle.__init__(): Constructor”.

    #-- 2 --
    # [ if inFile contains a valid puzzle file ->
    #     puzzle  :=  a Puzzle instance representing that file
    #   else ->
    #     sys.stderr  +:=  error message(s)
    #     stop execution ]
    try:
        puzzle = Puzzle ( inFile )
    except SyntaxError, detail:
        fatal ( "Terminated due to puzzle syntax errors: %s" %
                detail )
    print "=== Initial state"
    print puzzle.show()

For the generator that produces all the solutions, see Section 37, “Puzzle.genSolutions(): Generate all solutions”. This generator yields the Puzzle instance in a solved state, and the method described in Section 27, “Puzzle.show(): Display the state of the puzzle” returns the solution as a multi-line string. We'll also need a counter to keep track of how many solutions were produced.

    #-- 3 --
    nSolutions  =  0

    #-- 4 --
    # [ nSolutions  +:=  number of solutions of puzzle, if any
    #   sys.stdout  +:=  solutions of puzzle, if any ]
    for solution in puzzle.genSolutions():
        nSolutions += 1
        print "\n=== Solution #%d" % nSolutions
        print solution.show()

    #-- 5 --
    # [ sys.stdout  +:=  nSolutions ]
    print "=== Total number of solutions: %d" % nSolutions