I m trying to make a sudoku solver,with basic knowledge,using recursion.It solved sudoku puzzles i entered as long as the number of repetition is less than 3485/3500.Every time it fails it fails somewhere around that number.So i was wondering is there a threshold or is it my mistake?
Each call takes some stack space. When you call things recursively, the first call is still going on while the second one starts, so you are using stack space for 2 calls. If call#2 makes call#3 then your stack contains 3 calls and so on.
The recursion limit is based on how much stack you have.
Related
I am actually making an algorithm that takes as an input a file containing tetriminoses (figures from tetris) and arranges them in smallest possible square.
Still I encounter a weird problem :
The algorithm works for less than 10 tetriminoses (every time) but start crashing with 11, 12... (I concluded that it depends on how complicated the solution is, as it finds some 14 and 15 solutions).
But the thing is, if I add an optimisation flag like -Ofast (the program is written in C) it works for every input I give him no matter how much time it takes (sometimes more than a hour..).
First I had a lot of leaks (I was using double linked list) so I changed for an Int Array, no more leaks, but same problem.
I tried using the debugger but it makes no sense (see picture) :
Debugger says my variables do not exist anymore but all I do is increment or decrement them.
For this example it just stopped while everything is fine (values of variables are correct)
Here is the link of my main function (the one that do the backtracking):
https://github.com/Caribou123/fillitAG/blob/master/19canplace/solve.c
The rest of program (same repository) consist of functions to put tetriminoses in my array, remove them from it, or print the result.
Basically I try placing a tetri, if I have enough space, I place the next one, otherwise I remove the last one and place it to the next available position etc..
Also I first thought that I were trying to place something outside of the Array, so now my Array is way bigger than it should be and filled with -1 for invalid cases (so in the worst case I just rewrite a -1), 0 for free ones, and integers values from 1 to 26 for figures.
The fact that the program works with the flag -Ofast really troubles me, as the algorithm seems to work perfectly, what could cause my program to crash ?
Here is how I tracked the number of recursions, by adding two static variables
And here is the output
(In case you want to test it yourself, use the 19canplace folder, and compile with : gcc *.c libft/libft.a)
Thanks in advance for your time,
Artiom
I have to write a simple program in C that prints to the standard output triangle with two equal edges for given number n. Meaning that for n=3 the output would be:
x
xx
xxx
Now I'm supposed to do two version of this program:
1. Memory conservative.
2. Time conservative.
Now I'm not entirely sure, but I think that the first version would just print x one at a time, and the second would expand the char table one at a time and then print it.
But is printing a char* faster than printing multiple single chars?
You may not be able to observe but building the entire string in memory and then printing it at once is definitely faster in theory. Reason being you will be making less calls to printf function. Each time you call a function there are multiple things that happen in the background like pushing all the current method variables and current location to stack and popping them back after returning.
However as I mentioned you may not be able to observe this difference for smaller inputs because the time needed for each of these operations are small unless you use a computer from 1960s.
I am new here and I have a problem that's bugging me.I am a beginner so please don't laugh at me.
I want to make recursive quicksort work on a large number of elements,let's say 100000.I know this will cause the stack to overflow.I have been googling for the past few days trying to find a way to manage the call stack.I can't really find a good source of information.
My ideea is to remove the return adress of each recursive call,except the last one,which will return to the first function call.I don't know if that is possible or if it is another solution for this problem.
P.S. : I want to keep the quicksort recursive.
Sorry if my problems looks silly,but i sould appreaciate any pertinent answer.
Sorry for my bad English.
Thank you!
The standard way to solve the issue of running out of stack space with recursive algorithm is to implement it iteratively instead.
Please note that 100000 items in an array is nothing; this will only lead to nested calls 17 functions deep:
$ echo "l(100000)/l(2)" | bc -l
16.60964047443681173951
That's log(N)/log(2) -- the log(2) is to convert it to log base 2.
Any platform that supports recursive function calls will almost certainly be able to handle 17 nested calls.
If stack space is a problem but memory in general isn't, you can easily convert a recursive implementation into an iterative one by using your own heap-allocated stack. That is, instead of making a recursive function call, push the arguments you care about onto your own stack data structure. You then can iterate over your stack and process each set of arguments.
it sounds like you're trying to do tail recursion, which has been discussed here;
Tail recursion in C
I need to write a program where during run time, a set of integers of arbitrary size will taken as input. They will be seperated by white space. At the end, a new line is given, showing the end of input. How do I save them into an array of integers so that i can display them later. I think it is a little difficult because the number of values that will be entered is not known during compilation
Sounds like homework.
Correct me if I am wrong and I will give you more than hints.
You can either declare an array of a really large size that would not possibly be filled by the user input, then use scanf or something like that to grab the integers until you hit '\n', or you can grab each integer at a time, allocating memory as you go, using a combination of malloc and memcpy calls. The first option should never be done in a real world problem, and I am certainly not advocating such practices even though your textbook probably tells you to do it this way.
There is an example just like this in K&R.
This is a typical problem you will have in C. The solution is usually one of two options.
Use a really large array that is large enough to hold the input. Sometimes this is a poor option when the data could be really large. An example of when it would be a bad idea is when you are saving a video frame or a large text file to the array. This also opens you up to a buffer overrun attack in older versions of Windows. However, this is sometimes a good quick hack solution for smaller (homework) programs where you can count on the user (i.e. your professor who is not trying to break your program) to not input 1000's of characters. Usually this is considered bad practice, please consider my 2nd option for the security reason I mentioned before.
Use dynamic arrays (i.e. malloc). This is probably what your professor wants you to do as this sounds like a typical problem to use when a student is first learning pointers and arrays. This is a great approach, just remember to call free on your memory when you are finished. The tricky part here is that you still have to know the size of the array you want ahead of time (not at compile time though of course).
This is just to work out a problem which looks pretty interesting. I tried to think over it, but couldn't find the way to solve this, in efficient time. May be my concepts are still building up... anyways the question is as follows..
Wanted to find out all possible permutation of a given string....... Also, share if there could be any possible variations to this problem.
I found out a solution on net, that uses recursion.. but that doesn't satisfies as it looks bit erroneous.
the program is as follows:-
void permute(char s[], int d)
{
int i;
if(d == strlen(s))
printf("%s",s);
else
{
for(i=d;i<strlen(s);i++)
{
swap(s[d],s[i]);
permute(s,d+1);
swap(s[d],s[i]);
}
}
}
If this program looks good (it is giving error when i ran it), then please provide a small example to understand this, as i am still developing recursion concepts..
Any other efficient algorithm, if exists, can also be discussed....
And Please,, this is not a HW........
Thanks.............
The code looks correct, though you only have the core of the algorithm, not a complete program. You'll have to provide the missing bits: headers, a main function, and a swap macro (you could make swap a function by calling it as swap(s, d, i)).
To understand the algorithm, it would be instructive to add some tracing output, say printf("permute(%s, %d)", s, d) at the beginning of the permute function, and run the program with a 3- or 4-character string.
The basic principle is that each recursive call to permute successively places each remaining element at position d; the element that was at position d is saved by putting it where the aforementioned remaining element was (i.e. the elements are swapped). For each placement, permute is called recursively to generate all desired substrings after the position d. So the top-level call (d=0) to permute successively tries all elements in position 0, second-level calls (d=1) try all elements in position 1 except for the one that's already in position 0, etc. The next-to-deepest calls (d=n-1) have a single element to try in the last position, and the deepest calls (d=n) print the resulting permutation.
The core algorithm requires Θ(n·n!) running time, which is the best possible since that's the size of the output. However this implementation is less efficient that it could be because it recomputes strlen(s) at every iteration, for a Θ(n²·n!) running time; the simple fix of precomputing the length would yield Θ(n·n!). The implementation requires Θ(n) memory, which is the best possible since that's the size of the input.
For an explanation of the recursion see Gilles answer.
Your code has some problems. First it will be hard to implement the required swap as a function in C, since C lacks the concept of call by reference. You could try to do this with a macro, but then you'd either have to use the exclusive-or trick to swap values in place, or use a temporary variable.
Then your repeated use of strlen on every recursion level blows up your complexity of the program. As you give it this is done at every iteration of every recursion level. Since your string even changes (because of the swaps) the compiler wouldn't even be able to notice that this is always the same. So he wouldn't be able to optimize anything. Searching for the terminating '\0' in your string would dominate all other instructions by far if you implement it like that.