Mercurial > emacs
diff lisp/play/hanoi.el @ 2307:10e417efb12a
Added or corrected Commentary sections
author | Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com> |
---|---|
date | Mon, 22 Mar 1993 03:27:18 +0000 |
parents | a5eec33a8f44 |
children | 507f64624555 |
line wrap: on
line diff
--- a/lisp/play/hanoi.el Mon Mar 22 03:00:23 1993 +0000 +++ b/lisp/play/hanoi.el Mon Mar 22 03:27:18 1993 +0000 @@ -8,6 +8,35 @@ ; This is in the public domain ; since he distributed it without copyright notice in 1985. +;;; Commentary: + +;; Solves the Towers of Hanoi puzzle while-U-wait. +;; +;; The puzzle: Start with N rings, decreasing in sizes from bottom to +;; top, stacked around a post. There are two other posts. Your mission, +;; should you choose to accept it, is to shift the pile, stacked in its +;; original order, to another post. +;; +;; The challenge is to do it in the fewest possible moves. Each move +;; shifts one ring to a different post. But there's a rule; you can +;; only stack a ring on top of a larger one. +;; +;; The simplest nontrivial version of this puzzle is N = 3. Solution +;; time rises as 2**N, and programs to solve it have long been considered +;; classic introductory exercises in the use of recursion. +;; +;; The puzzle is called `Towers of Hanoi' because an early popular +;; presentation wove a fanciful legend around it. According to this +;; myth (uttered long before the Vietnam War), there is a Buddhist +;; monastery at Hanoi which contains a large room with three time-worn +;; posts in it surrounded by 21 golden discs. Monks, acting out the +;; command of an ancient prophecy, have been moving these disks, in +;; accordance with the rules of the puzzle, once every day since the +;; monastery was founded over a thousand years ago. They are said +;; believe that when the last move of the puzzle is completed, the +;; world will end in a clap of thunder. Fortunately, they are nowhere +;; even close to being done... + ;;; Code: ;;;