Sudoku
Solving sudoku puzzles usually requires nothing more than a pen and some time. Solving 50 sudoku puzzles, however, requires a huge amount of time. 50 sudoku puzzles...? Yep, to get the solution for Problem 96 on ProjectEuler, 50 sudokus need to be solved first. I've solved my first 49 problems on ProjectEuler a few years ago and recently rediscovered the website. So I started with the sudoku problem and got the solution quite fast by using a simple brute force algorithm. I'm not going to post the solution for the problem, but just the C++ code for my sudoku solver. After compiling the program with g++ -std=c++11 -O6 -o sudokusolver sudokusolver.cpp, sudokus given in an input file are solved with a simple recursion based algorithm. An example is given below:
Trying to solve: --------- 003020600 900305001 001806400 008102900 700000008 006708200 002609500 800203009 005010300 --------- | V --------- 483921657 967345821 251876493 548132976 729564138 136798245 372689514 814253769 695417382 ---------
The sudokus in the input file must consist of 9 consecutive lines containing the initial values inside the sudoku. Blank fields are represented by zero. Multiple sudokus have to be separated by at least one dash in a single line.