Programming Design Help - How to Structure a Sudoku Solver program? [closed]

Answer 1

just for fun, here is what is supposed to be the shortest program, in python, that can solve a sudoku grid:

def r(a):i=a.find('0') if i<0:print a [m in[(i-j)%9*(i/9^j/9)*(i/27^j/27|i%9/3^j%9/3)or a[j]for j in range(81)]or r(a[:i]+m+a[i+1:])for m in`14**7*9`]r(raw_input())

hmm ok it's quite cryptic and I don't think it matchs your question so I apologize for this noise :)

Anyway you'll find some explanation of these 173 characters here. There's also an explanation in french here

Answer 2

Don't over-engineer it. It's a 2-D array or maybe a Board class that represents a 2-D array at best. Have functions that calculate a given row/column and functions that let you access each square. Additional methods can be used validate that each sub-3x3 and row/column don't violate the required constraints.