#Is it possible to generalize searching a diagonal?

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iron apex
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Power of 4

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<@&987246399047479336> please have a look, thanks.

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iron apex
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So basically, i had to search for diagonals in the game "connect 4", and while I did suceed in doing it, it's not the prettiest thing which I wrote. I basically brute forced it, I was wondering if it was possible to generalize this with loops?

modest compass
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sure

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u just have to work out the pattern

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how do diagonals work?

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well, its always +1 on x and y

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so u start somewhere and then x++ and y++ each time

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at some point u run out of bounds

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and then u can either stop or just reset back, so that u start all over again

iron apex
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i did not use any loops, but im pretty sure theres a better way to do this

modest compass
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maybe u mean hardcoding?

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hard to guess since u didnt share anything

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if u hardcoded it, it wouldnt work if u increase the size of the game board

iron apex
modest compass
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well yeah

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so thats hardcoded

iron apex
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example

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i was not able to generalize it

modest compass
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yeah but its not that difficult

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as said

iron apex
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im trying to find a pattern for this with loops

modest compass
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good that i just explained it to u

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so now u can do it

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id say if u absolutely have zero interest or plans in changing the board size, there is technically nothing wrong with hardcoding it - it works after all

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that said, one can still make ur code more readable

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by getting rid of all the duplication

iron apex
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ill respond to you if Im still stuck

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btw in my vertical i was able to employ a loop

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@modest compass

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same for the horizontal

modest compass
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yeah but u still hardcode the offsets and u have a lot of duplication

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for example that grille[i][compteur + ...] is duplicated everywhere

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also the == 'R'

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all of this can be removed

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for example with simple helper methods

iron apex
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the code is already written for me for the most part, i only need to code this method

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certain methods

modest compass
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} else if (checkAll(1, 2, 3, 4, "R")) {
 ...
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and so on

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with such a method u could reduce all of this mess to just

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ah and also, all ur cases do exactly the same

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so this can be merged as well

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if (checkAll(0, 1, 2, 3)
  || checkAll(1, 2, 3, 4)
  || checkAll(2, 3, 4, 5)
  || checkAll(3, 4, 5, 6)) {
    trouve = true;
}
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at this point u realize the pattern

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and can make it a simple loop

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for (int offset = 0; offset < board.width; offset++) {
  if (checkDiagonal(offset)) {
    trouve = true;
  }
}
iron apex
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will i need to decrement at some point?

modest compass
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huh?

iron apex
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--

modest compass
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i just literally took ur current code

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and moved it around into helper methods

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nothing else

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i didnt create new code at all

iron apex
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ok give me some time to wrap my head around this

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btw is hardcoding something "bad" ?

modest compass
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as i said earlier

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if u dont intent to change the board size at all, its not

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the problem in ur code is not the hardcoding

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its the duplication that makes it ugly

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hardcoding a few numbers like checkDiagonal(1) checkDiagonal(2), ... is not a problem per se

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unless u want to change the size of the board

iron apex
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oh ok

modest compass
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the problem is that u duplicated a lot of ur code

iron apex
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thanks then

modest compass
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ending up with a huge if-else thingy thats just hard to read

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and easy to make bugs

iron apex
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yes you'Re right

signal aurora
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well here is one fun way

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@iron apex can you share how you represent your board?

iron apex
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it's a 6*7 board

signal aurora
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in memory

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what is the data structure holding this

iron apex
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two dimension array

signal aurora
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of what

iron apex
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char

signal aurora
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okay so here is the fun solution

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still use a char[][] but

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to check diagonals, instead of doing that boring math stuff...

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(give me 5-10)

iron apex
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Yes it's not going to work i realzie that

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but the game is supposed to be connect four though

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so the sizes are suppsoed to stay the same

signal aurora
hot sorrelBOT
# signal aurora

I uploaded your attachments as gist. That way, they are easier to read for everyone, especially mobile users 👍

signal aurora
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this is what over engineering looks like btw

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not actually the approach i would reccomend

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but effectively you can turn each char into an object that knows its neighbors

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and just ask each cell "hey do you have three neighbors that are the same as you"

iron apex
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@modest compass i fixed my ugly code for something better

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for diagonals

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i found the pattern finally to be able to do this cleaner

iron apex
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those are the decreasing ones, there's another block for the increasing ones