Assignment A3 - Maze Runner, Take Two

• Student: Andreas Sideris
• Program: B. Eng. In Software Engineering
• Course code: SFWRENG 2AA4
• Course Title: Software Design I - Introduction to Software Development
• Term: Level II - Winter 2024

Business Logic Specification

This program explores a maze, finding a path from an entry point to an exit one.

• The maze is stored in a text file, with # representing walls and ␣ (empty space) representing passages.
• You’ll find examples of such mazes that can be used to test the program in the examples directory.
• The Maze is surrounded by walls on its four borders, except for its entry/exit points.
  • Entry and exit points are always located on the East and West border.
  • The maze is not directed. As such, exit and entry can be interchanged.
• At the beginning of the exploration, we're located on the entry tile, facing the opposite side (e.g., if entering by the eastern entry, you're facing West).
• The program generates a sequence of instructions to reach the opposite exit (i.e., a "path"):
  • F means 'move forward' according to your current direction
  • R means 'turn right' (does not move, just change direction), and L means ‘turn left’.
• A canonical path contains only F, R and L symbols
• A factorized path squashes together similar instructions (i.e., FFF = 3F, LL = 2L).
• Spaces are ignored in the instruction sequence (only for readability: FFLFF = FF L FF)
• The program takes as input a maze and print the path on the standard output.

How to run this software?

To build the program, simply package it with Maven:

mvn package 

Then, a path through an example maze using the 'right-hand method' can be found with these flags, while executing the .jar file:

java -jar target/mazerunner.jar -i examples/medium.maz.txt

java -jar target/mazerunner.jar --input examples/medium.maz.txt

java -jar target/mazerunner.jar -i examples/medium.maz.txt -method righthand

To use the faster breadth-first search algorithm:

java -jar target/mazerunner.jar -i examples/medium.maz.txt -method bfs

Additionally, the validity of any path can be checked using the -p flag. Any path to be checked must be surrounded by quotes ("") and only contain F, R, and L symbols along with the number of times they are used, if more than once (ex. 4F).

java -jar target/mazerunner.jar -i examples/straight.maz.txt -p "4F"

Finally, the amount (calculated by (number of moves for right-hand)/(number of moves for bfs)) the breadth-first search algorithm is faster than the right-hand method for any given maze can be found, as well as the time the program takes to run each algorithm and load the maze file.

java -jar target/mazerunner.jar -i examples/medium.maz.txt -method bfs -baseline righthand

Examples

mosser@azrael A1-Template % java -jar target/mazerunner.jar -i ./examples/straight.maz.txt
4F
mosser@azrael A1-Template %

If a given path is correct, the program prints the message correct path on the standard output.

mosser@azrael A1-Template % java -jar target/mazerunner.jar -i ./examples/straight.maz.txt -p 4F
correct path
mosser@azrael A1-Template %

If a given path is incorrect, the program prints the message incorrect path on the standard output.

mosser@azrael A1-Template % java -jar target/mazerunner.jar -i ./examples/straight.maz.txt -p 3F
inccorrect path
mosser@azrael A1-Template %