211hw11_details_S11

Comp211 HW11 Supporting Code Details

Core Data Structures

The main data structures are represented by 3 interfaces:

ICell -- a single square on the Sudoku board.
- A cell has a set of integer values, which are accessible either as a HashSet<Integer> or as an array of integers.
- A cell also has a collection (Vector<ICell>) of ICellSets to which it belongs. These are the cell's row, column and block, in that order.
  - Don't forget that the cell is also a member of every ICellSet that it references.
- A cell can be in one of three logical states:
  - Empty - there are no values contained in the cell. This corresponds to the situation where the board is unsolvable because a cell has no possible value.
  - Solved - the cell contains exactly one value. If and only if you know for sure that the cell is in this state, then the single value can be accessed as aCell.getValueArray()[0].
  - Unsolved - the cell contains multiple possible values. At most, a cell could contain order*order values.
ICellSet - A collection of ICells.
- For convenience sake, the cells are in a distinct order (i.e. left-to right for a row) and thus each cell is addressable by an index value.