I am using Java and working on 5X5 board game(represented as String[][]) and I looking for an efficient way to randomly place 3 "A"'s, 3 "B",s 3 "C"'s, 3 "D"'s on the board.
I thought about using a nested for loop inside of a while loop to go over each slot, and randomly assign letters to 'slots' on the board, but I want to possibly do it in one pass of the board, if there is a good way to randomly place all 15 letters on the board in one pass.
Any suggestions?
You can use an ArrayList to store the letters (and the empty cells, I'm using a dot . so you can recognize it in the output), then use Collections.shuffle() to put elements of the ArrayList in "random" places. Finally assign each letter to the String[][] array:
public static void main(String[] args)
{
String[][] board = new String[5][5];
List<String> letters = new ArrayList<>();
// fill with letters
for (int i = 0; i < 3; i++) {
letters.add("A");
letters.add("B");
letters.add("C");
letters.add("D");
letters.add("E");
}
// fill with "empty"
for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
letters.add(".");
}
Collections.shuffle(letters);
for (int i = 0; i < board.length; i++) {
for (int j = 0; j < board.length; j++) {
board[i][j] = letters.get(i*board.length + j);
}
}
for (int i = 0; i < board.length; i++) {
for (int j = 0; j < board.length; j++) {
System.out.print(board[i][j] + " ");
}
System.out.println();
}
}
Output Sample:
C B . . .
A E . E A
. A . D D
C . . . D
B C E . B
Note:
The operation i*board.length + j will generate consequent numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, ... 24 en the nested loop.
One way: create an ArrayList<Character> or of String, feed it the 15 letters, call java.util.Collections.shuffle(...) on the ArrayList, and then iterate over this List, placing its randomized items into your array.
e.g.,
List<String> stringList = new ArrayList<String>();
for (char c = 'A'; c <= 'E'; c++) {
for (int i = 0; i < 3; i++) {
stringList.add(String.valueOf(c));
}
}
for (int i = 15; i < 25; i++) {
stringList.add(null);
}
Collections.shuffle(stringList);
String[][] gameBoard = new String[5][5];
for (int i = 0; i < gameBoard.length; i++) {
for (int j = 0; j < gameBoard[i].length; j++) {
gameBoard[i][j] = stringList.get(i * gameBoard.length + j);
}
}
// now test it
for (int i = 0; i < gameBoard.length; i++) {
for (int j = 0; j < gameBoard[i].length; j++) {
System.out.printf("%-6s ", gameBoard[i][j]);
}
System.out.println();
}
! or (char) 0.gameBoard? Why not just write gameBoard[i] = stringList.subList(i*5, i*5+5).toArray(new String[0]); inside a single (unnested) loop?