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

cletus' answer is good, but he forgot to also encode whose turn it is. It is part of the current state, and is necessary if you're using that state to drive a search algorithm (like an alpha-beta derivative).

I'm not a chess player, but I believe there's also one more corner case: how many moves have been repeated. Once each player makes the same move three times, the game is a draw, no? If so, then you'd need to save that information in the state because after the third repeat, the state is now terminal.