Aha I now KNOW at least what a 'sudoku' puzzle is - I intially tried 
googling with the search string 'soduku' but only got a few hits, none of 
which were relevant, then I realised the spelling you gave me might be 
slightly off (you wrote 'soduku' instead of 'sudoku' an easy oversight as 
they both sound right!). If a get a couple of free hours over the weekend 
I'll have a go at an array only based solver and post results here if 
successfull. Now I know the extent of the problem your routines are designed 
to solve - your code now looks somewhat terse (a good thing in my book!) - 
quite an admirable effort as I'm assuming it works (gut instinct about YOU 
as a person tells me it probably does!) as designed (haven't yet read it all 
through in light of my new understanding of the programs aims!). Good work 
and a nice example of someone who has got the genuine programming bug 
(programming for it's own sake or 'art' if you like!). :-o)
(On reflection my above response is somewhat 'lispy' given my extensive use 
of parentheses *lol*)
Phil


"Philip Lewis"  wrote in message 
news:38odecF5qsi81U1{at}individual.net...
>
> "Ian"  wrote in message 
> news:1109811970.234440.131940{at}g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>> Actually I don't need to write it. I've managed to simulate the flow,
>> using Not existing selects as cdrs.
>>
>> If I do this, I end up with, in pure Lisp style, everything done in a
>> single command.
>>
>> "Delete B From Box B Where Exists (Select * From Box Z Where B.V = Z.V
>> And (B.C  Z.C Or B.R  Z.R) And (B.R = Z.R Or B.C =
Z.C Or B.Box =
>> Z.Box) And Not Exists (Select * from Box F Where F.R = Z.R And F.C =
>> Z.C And F.V  Z.V)) Or Exists (Select * From Box B2 Where B2.R = B.R
>> And B2.C = B.C And B2.V  B.V And (Not Exists (Select * From Box B3
>> Where B2.R = B3.R And B3.C  B2.C And B2.V = B3.V) Or Not Exists
>> (Select * From Box B3 Where B2.C = B3.C And B3.R  B2.R And B2.V =
>> B3.V) Or Not Exists (Select * From Box B3 Where B2.Box = B3.Box And
>> (B2.R  B3.R Or B3.C  B2.C) And B2.V = B3.V)))"
>>
>> It even has Lots of Silly Parentheses.
>
> That is the aspect of lisp that tends to do my head in - i.e. it seems to 
> encourage inordinate nesting via the use of parentheses. I used to write a 
> lot of heavilly nested code myself in earlier years but after being 
> contracted to read others code similarly nested I started using other code 
> writing strategies to make it easier to follow and read. Of course the 
> example you gave above isn't really that bad at all having only three 
> levels of nesting at max but when it comes to lisp 'in the wild' I have 
> seen some really mind boggling nesting depths!
>
>>
>> Of course there's lots more clever ways the soduko puzzles could be
>> complicated, such as adding further levels of induction in order to
>> determine for certain, a particular step.
>>
>> This one above only solves the typical cases where deduction is all you
>> need.
>>
>>
>>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> All the rest of the code is setting the data up. The single instruction
>> above (repeatedly called) solves the soduko. In the lisp it would of
>> course repeatedly iterate itself.
>
> Interesting use of database tables and procedures to solve mathematical 
> type puzzles - of course this gives you some advantages over a purely 
> 'array' based solution having at your disposal the 'select' commands and 
> union functions etc. Thanks for your time and effort - I still have not 
> yet got my head into suduku's (distracted by my current focus on hardware 
> etc) but it would be an interesting excercise to see if I could achieve 
> the same with a purely array based scheme - at this stage I don't know if 
> such solutions would be possible but it would be interesting to find out.
> Perhaps you have already investigated that route but found that where you 
> have a dbms engine to exploit you might as well get the 'best of both 
> worlds'.
> In any case your code examples are a definite keeper if only for those 
> 'slow' nights when I have too much caffeine in my blood and doing a few 
> crosswords just won't suffice! :-o)
>
> Phil
>
>>
>> use Test
>> Drop View SQ
>> Drop Table dbo.Box
>> Drop Procedure dbo.spSudokuInitRow2
>> Drop Procedure dbo.spSudokuInitBox2
>> Drop Procedure dbo.spViewAll2
>> Go
>> Create View SQ As Select Val = 1 Union Select Val = 2 Union Select Val
>> = 3 Union Select Val = 4 Union Select Val = 5 Union Select Val = 6
>> Union Select Val = 7 Union Select Val = 8 Union Select Val = 9
>> Go
>> Create Table dbo.Box (R TinyInt, C TinyInt, V TinyInt, Box As 3 * ((R -
>> 1) / 3) + (C - 1) / 3 + 1)
>> Go
>> Create Procedure dbo.spSudokuInitRow2 {at}R TinyInt, {at}Data Char (9) As
>> Begin
>> Declare {at}C TinyInt, {at}Ch Char (1), {at}V TinyInt
>> Set {at}C = 1
>> While {at}C <= 9 Begin
>>  Set {at}Ch = Substring ({at}Data, {at}C, 1)
>>  If {at}Ch in ('1', '2', '3', '4', '5', '6', '7', '8', '9') Delete Box
>> Where R = {at}R And C = {at}C And V  Convert (TinyInt, {at}Ch)
>>  Set {at}C = {at}C + 1
>> End
>> End
>> Go
>> Create Procedure dbo.spSudokuInitBox2 {at}Row1 Char(9), {at}Row2 Char(9),
>> {at}Row3 Char(9), {at}Row4 Char(9), {at}Row5 Char(9), {at}Row6 Char(9), {at}Row7
>> Char(9), {at}Row8 Char(9), {at}Row9 Char(9) As Begin
>> Set NoCount On
>> Delete dbo.Box
>> Insert Box Select S1.Val, S2.Val, S3.Val From SQ S1, SQ S2, SQ S3
>> Exec dbo.spSudokuInitRow2 1, {at}Row1
>> Exec dbo.spSudokuInitRow2 2, {at}Row2
>> Exec dbo.spSudokuInitRow2 3, {at}Row3
>> Exec dbo.spSudokuInitRow2 4, {at}Row4
>> Exec dbo.spSudokuInitRow2 5, {at}Row5
>> Exec dbo.spSudokuInitRow2 6, {at}Row6
>> Exec dbo.spSudokuInitRow2 7, {at}Row7
>> Exec dbo.spSudokuInitRow2 8, {at}Row8
>> Exec dbo.spSudokuInitRow2 9, {at}Row9
>> End
>> Go
>> Create Procedure dbo.spViewAll2 As Begin
>> Set Nocount On
>> Declare {at}R TinyInt, {at}Strn Varchar (3000), {at}C TinyInt, {at}ML Int, {at}Str
>> Varchar (19), {at}Cnt TinyInt
>> Declare {at}T Table (IDX Int Identity (1, 1), Stng Varchar (4000))
>> Select {at}ML = Max (Y.Cnt) From (Select Cnt = Count (*) From Box Group
>> By R, C) Y
>> Set {at}R = 1
>> While {at}R < 10 Begin
>>  Set {at}Strn = ''
>>  Set {at}C = 1
>>  While {at}C < 10 Begin
>>   Set {at}Cnt = 1
>>   Set {at}Str = ''
>>   While {at}Cnt < 10 Begin
>>    If Exists (Select * From Box Where R = {at}R And C = {at}C And V = {at}Cnt)
>> Set {at}Str = {at}Str + Convert (Varchar, {at}Cnt)
>>    Set {at}Cnt = {at}Cnt + 1
>>   End
>>   Set {at}Strn = {at}Strn + {at}Str + Space ({at}ML - Len ({at}Str))
>>   Set {at}C = {at}C + 1
>>   Set {at}Strn = {at}Strn + '|'
>>   If {at}C in (3, 6) Set {at}Strn = {at}Strn + '|'
>>  End
>>  Insert {at}T Values ({at}Strn)
>>  Set {at}R = {at}R + 1
>> End
>> Select Stng From {at}T
>> End
>> go
>> Drop Procedure dbo.solveit2
>> go
>> Create Procedure dbo.solveit2 As
>> Begin
>> Declare {at}RowsLast Int, {at}RowsKeep Int
>> Set {at}RowsKeep = 81
>> Set {at}RowsLast = 0
>> While {at}RowsLast  {at}RowsKeep Begin
>> Set {at}RowsKeep = {at}RowsLast
>> Delete B From Box B Where Exists (Select * From Box Z Where B.V = Z.V
>> And (B.C  Z.C Or B.R  Z.R) And (B.R = Z.R Or B.C =
Z.C Or B.Box =
>> Z.Box) And Not Exists (Select * from Box F Where F.R = Z.R And F.C =
>> Z.C And F.V  Z.V)) Or Exists (Select * From Box B2 Where B2.R = B.R
>> And B2.C = B.C And B2.V  B.V And (Not Exists (Select * From Box B3
>> Where B2.R = B3.R And B3.C  B2.C And B2.V = B3.V) Or Not Exists
>> (Select * From Box B3 Where B2.C = B3.C And B3.R  B2.R And B2.V =
>> B3.V) Or Not Exists (Select * From Box B3 Where B2.Box = B3.Box And
>> (B2.R  B3.R Or B3.C  B2.C) And B2.V = B3.V)))
>> Select {at}RowsLast = {at}{at}RowCount
>> End
>> Exec dbo.spViewAll2
>> End
>> go
>> exec dbo.spSudokuInitBox2 'xxx56x421', 'xxxx9xx86', 'xx2xxx7xx',
>> '8xx4xxx1x', 'xx5xxx3xx', 'x1xxx8xx7', 'xx1xxx9xx', '47xx2xxxx',
>> '639x41xxx'
>> Go
>> Exec solveit2
>>
>
> 




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