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COMP0233: Research Software Engineering With Python

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Solution: my Maze Model

Here's one possible solution to the Maze model. Yours will probably be different, and might be just as good. That's the artistry of software engineering: some solutions will be faster, others use less memory, while others will be easier for other people to understand. Optimising and balancing these factors is fun!

In [1]:
house = {
    'living' : {
        'exits': {
            'north' : 'kitchen',
            'outside' : 'garden',
            'upstairs' : 'bedroom'
        },
        'people' : ['Graham'],
        'capacity' : 2
    },
    'kitchen' : {
        'exits': {
            'south' : 'living'
        },
        'people' : [],
        'capacity' : 1
    },
    'garden' : {
        'exits': {
            'inside' : 'living'
        },
        'people' : ['David'],
        'capacity' : 3
    },
    'bedroom' : {
        'exits': {
            'downstairs' : 'living',
            'jump' : 'garden'
        },
        'people' : [],
        'capacity' : 1
    }
}

Some important points:

  • The whole solution is a complete nested structure.
  • I used indenting to make the structure easier to read.
  • Python allows code to continue over multiple lines, so long as sets of brackets are not finished.
  • There is an empty person list in empty rooms, so the type structure is robust to potential movements of people.
  • We are nesting dictionaries and lists, with string and integer data.
In [2]:
people_so_far = 0

for room_name in house:
    people_so_far = people_so_far + len(house[room_name]["people"])

print(people_so_far)

2