SFWRENG 2AA4 Assignment 1 - Maze Runner

• Student: Ethan McMehen
• Program: B. Eng. In Software Engineering
• Course code: SFWRENG 2AA4
• Course Title: Software Design I - Introduction to Software Development
• Term: Level II - Winter 2024

Business Logic Specification

This program explores a maze, finding a path from an entry point to an exit one.

• The maze is stored in a text file, with # representing walls and ␣ (empty space) representing passages.
• You’ll find examples of such mazes in the examples directory.
  • You can also use the Maze Generator to generate others.
• The Maze is surrounded by walls on its four borders, except for its entry/exit points.
  • Entry and exit points are always located on the East and West border.
  • The maze is not directed. As such, exit and entry can be interchanged.
• At the beginning of the exploration, we're located on the entry tile, facing the opposite side (e.g., if entering by the eastern entry, you're facing West).
• The program generates a sequence of instructions to reach the opposite exit (i.e., a "path"):
  • F means 'move forward' according to your current direction
  • R means 'turn right' (does not move, just change direction), and L means ‘turn left’.
• A canonical path contains only F, R and L symbols
• A factorized path squashes together similar instructions (i.e., FFF = 3F, LL = 2L).
• Spaces are ignored in the instruction sequence (only for readability: FFLFF = FF L FF)
• The program takes as input a maze and print the path on the standard output.
  • For this assignment, the path does not have to be the shortest one.
• The program can take a path as input and verify if it's a legit one.

How to run this software?

To build the program, simply package it with Maven:

ethanmcmehen@Ethan-MacBook-Air Maze-Runner % mvn -q clean package 

Command line arguments

The program uses the following flags to run correctly:

• -i MAZE_FILE: specifies the filename to be used;
• -p PATH_SEQUENCE: activates the path verification mode to validate that PATH_SEQUENCE is correct for the maze

Examples

When no logs are activated, the programs only print the computed path on the standard output.

ethanmcmehen@Ethan-MacBook-Air Maze-Runner % java -jar target/mazerunner.jar -i ./examples/straight.maz.txt
4F
ethanmcmehen@Ethan-MacBook-Air Maze-Runner %

If a given path is correct, the program prints the message correct path on the standard output.

ethanmcmehen@Ethan-MacBook-Air Maze-Runner % java -jar target/mazerunner.jar -i ./examples/straight.maz.txt -p 4F
Correct Path
ethanmcmehen@Ethan-MacBook-Air Maze-Runner %

If a given path is incorrect, the program prints the message incorrect path on the standard output.

ethanmcmehen@Ethan-MacBook-Air Maze-Runner % java -jar target/mazerunner.jar -i ./examples/straight.maz.txt -p 3F
Inccorrect Path
ethanmcmehen@Ethan-MacBook-Air Maze-Runner %