Assignment A3 - Maze Runner

• Student: Anam Khan
• 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 in the examples directory.
  • You can also use the Maze Generator to generate others.
• 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.
  • For this assignment, the path does not have to be the shortest one.
• The program can take a path as input and verify if it's a legit one.

How to run this software?

To build the program, simply package it with Maven:

khana489@AnamThinkpad A1-Template % mvn -q clean package 

Delivered version

Command line arguments

The delivered program at the end of this assignment should use the following flags:

• -i MAZE_FILE: specifies the filename to be used;
• -p PATH_SEQUENCE: activates the path verification mode to validate that PATH_SEQUENCE is correct for the maze
• -method {bfs, righthand}: specifies which path computation method to use. (default is bfs)
• -baseline {bfs, righthand}: specifies the baseline to execute benchmark mode

Examples

When no logs are activated, the programs only print the computed path on the standard output.

khana489@AnamThinkpad A1-Template % java -jar target/mazerunner.jar -i ./examples/straight.maz.txt
FFFF
khana489@AnamThinkpad A1-Template %

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

khana489@AnamThinkpad A1-Template % java -jar target/mazerunner.jar -i ./examples/straight.maz.txt -p FFFF
correct path
khana489@AnamThinkpad A1-Template %

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

khana489@AnamThinkpad A1-Template % java -jar target/mazerunner.jar -i ./examples/straight.maz.txt -p 3F
inccorrect path
khana489@AnamThinkpad A1-Template %

If running in benchmark mode, the program displays performance metrics

khana489@AnamThinkpad A1-Template % java -jar target/mazerunner.jar -i ./examples/straight.maz.txt -method righthand -baseline bfs
Time spent loading maze from file (in ms): 23.00
Time spent exploring the maze using the provided -method (in ms): 4.00
Time spent exploring the maze using the provided -baseline (in ms): 4.00
Improvement on the path as a speedup: 1.0

Sources

• Breadth First Search shortest path graph algorithm: Algorithms, 4th edition, by Robert Sedgewick and Kevin Wayne

Authors

• Anam Khan
• Alexandre Lachance (parts of starter code from: https://github.com/2AA4-W24/a1-solution)