Re: crossword project works


"Randy Howard" <randyhoward@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message > My only point there was that a -shutup flag to skip all the I/O would
make it run a lot faster, especially in slow terminal emulators, but
probably in all cases.

That's a good idea.

Deciding on a way to determine minimum valid hxw and warning on
attempts to use something that doesn't fit might be a nice feature.

Obviously you cannot fit a word that is longer than the crossword dimensions. The problem you've encountered is either that it doesn't have a single word that is short enough to fit, or that the padding integer, which was a bit of an afterthought, has gone to a high value (it only goes up to five) and the annealing regime is so short that it never comes back.
Or I've noticed that I'm using a bugged version of my annealing code. If the best solution is found on the 1024 temperature setting iterations, it won't pick the fact up.
So that's another one down.

Then I gave it a clue file by concatenating the times and biochemistry
clues files then adding in a very few lines up top with some improperly
formed clues (they had one or more extra '/' chars in the clue portion
of the line). It generating a bunch lines looking like this:

That's exactly the sort of testing you tend not to do yourself. Thanks a
lot. This can be fixed of course

This is exactly the sort of testing that I always do, (and a lot more
of it) to try and break the code before I drop it in somebody else's
lap. If you don't try and break your own code, somebody else will, and
quite often way down the road when it is painful to fix. It could be
really expensive, representing a lost customer, a lawsuit, or even
physical harm (think control software for things a lot more dangerous
than crossword puzzles). Doing it even on the toy problems is good
practice.

This is especially true when parsing file formats, with command line
arguments and tunable parameters, etc. Assume the user is evil, and
arm yourself :)


--
Randy Howard (2reply remove FOOBAR)
"The power of accurate observation is called cynicism by those
who have not got it." - George Bernard Shaw






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Relevant Pages

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