Programmer Puzzle: Encoding a chess board state throughout a game

Question

Not strictly a question, more of a puzzle...

Over the years, I\'ve been involved in a few technical interviews of new employees. Other than asking the standard \"do you

Answer 1

I'd use a run length encoding. Some pieces are unique (or exist only twice), so I can omit the length after them. Like cletus, I need 13 unique states, so I can use a nibble (4 bits) to encode the piece. The initial board would then look like this:

White Rook, W. Knight, W. Bishop, W. Queen, W. King, W. Bishop, W. Knight, W. Rook,
W. Pawn, 8,
Empty, 16, Empty, 16
B. Pawn, 8,
B. Rook, B. Knight, B. Bishop, B. Queen, B. King, B. Bishop, B. Knight, B. Rook

which leaves me with 8+2+4+2+8 nibbles = 24 nibbles = 96 bits. I can't encode 16 with a nibble but since "Empty, 0" doesn't make sense, I can treat "0" as "16".

If the board is empty but for a single pawn in the upper left corner, I get "Pawn, 1, Empty, 16, Empty, 16, Empty 16, Empty, 15" = 10 nibbles = 40 bits.

The worst case is when I have an empty square between each piece. But for the encoding of the piece, I just need 13 out of 16 values, so maybe I can use another one to say "Empty1". Then, I need 64 nibbles == 128bits.

For the movements, I need 3 bits for the piece (the color is given by the fact that white always moves first) plus 5 bits (0..63) for the new position = one byte per movement. Most of the time, I don't need the old position since only a single piece will be within range. For the odd case, I must use the single unused code (I just need 7 codes to encode the piece) and then 5 bits for the old and 5 bits for the new position.

This allows me to encode castling in 13 bites (I can move the King towards the Rook which is enough to say what I intend).

[EDIT] If you allow a smart encoder, then I need 0 bits for the initial setup (because it doesn't have to be encoded in any way: It's static) plus one byte per move.

[EDIT2] Which leaves the pawn transformation. If a pawn reaches the last row, I can move it in place to say "transforms" and then add the 3 bits for the piece it is replaced with (you don't have to use a queen; you can replace the pawn with anything but the King).