[plt-scheme] Question result is not true or false: (void)

In answer to your specific question, "question result is not true or false" is because you're using "and" or "cond" on the result of "display", which HAS no result.  The fact that you're asking questions about the result of "display" indicates a more fundamental issue: how do you represent a Sudoku board?

On Dec 27, 2009, at 12:51 PM, Jayto wrote:

> I am trying to design a sudokku game in dr scheme, but it is proving
> difficult.
> First what I did was draw out the game with this code:

There's your problem: you started thinking about I/O FIRST, rather than LAST.

What are the important questions to ask about a Sudoku board?  "What, if anything, is in this position?"  "Does this board violate any constraints?"  "Could I put this value into this position without violating any constraints?"  Things like that.  Oh, and "draw the board" too -- but that's probably the least-interesting one.

Next, you need to choose an internal representation, from which it should be reasonably easy to answer all of the above questions.  Test your representation and the basic functions that operate on it.  Note that in Scheme, you CAN test these functions without worrying about I/O first, because whatever you choose as an internal representation, Scheme will probably have SOME readable representation for it -- not spiffy graphics, but enough that you can tell whether the answers are right.

Then figure out how to identify legal vs. illegal moves, fill in a number, and all that stuff.  Test these functions, again without worrying about visual formatting.

Once you have all this stuff working, THEN you can write a "draw" function that converts an internal representation into an attractive graphical representation.  And you can write functions to handle user input, and all that stuff.  But the user interface really should be separate from the rules of the game (go look up "model-view separation", which governs how almost all modern GUI-based programs are written).



Stephen Bloch
sbloch at adelphi.edu