Programming a rubik's cube

[Avatar19]

Hi there, I have undertaken a personal project of trying to write a program that can solve a rubik's cube by outputting a complete solution on all the movements that need to be made in order to solve a cube from any position. I am not looking for people to give me a solution so please don't, but \I would appreciate any cool ideas of how to progress through the problem.
What I have started with is this:

White=['ww','1w','2w','3w','4w','5w','6w','7w','8w','9w']
Orange=['oo','1o','2o','3o','4o','5o','6o','7o','8o','9o']
Yellow=['yy','1y','2y','3y','4c','5y','6y','7y','8y','9y']
Red=['rr','1r','2r','3r','4r','5r','6r','7r','8r','9r']
Green=['gg','1g','2g','3g','4g','5g','6g','7g','8g','9g']
Blue=['bb','1b','2b','3b','4b','5b','6b','7b','8b','9b']
Master=[White,Orange,Red,Green,Blue,Yellow]

I thought maybe setting up Lists in order to provide a base for which a solved rubik's cube will look like in program form and below is alil search program o check if any List is not what it should be, but I am not super sure of where to go from here.

k=0
LEN=len(Master)
while LEN!=0: 
    Word=Master[k][0]
    for i in Master[k]:
        if Master[k][0][1]!=i[1]:
            print "no",Master[0][0][1],i[1],Master[k].index(i)	
        else: print "yes"
         
    k+=1
    LEN-=1

any suggestions welcome thanks

[dwblas]

Several of us started this on another forum but soon realized that none of us had the time to finish. I numbered every square and created a way to rotate it. The code will run as is and will print a cube and some moves as a test. Someone else did the Tkinter display, displaying the dictionary in the correct colors but I don't have that code now. Anyway, the code follows. Let us know how you are doing and post back if there are any questions about this code, and I assume that you already know about this link http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/How_to_...Rubik%27s_Cube

import sys
import os
import random

from collections import defaultdict

class rubik_test():
   def __init__(self):
      self.testing=1
      self.row_x={}     ## x dimension in 3 dimensional space
      self.row_y={}     ## y dimension
      self.row_z={}     ## z dimension
      self.color_dic={} ## assigns a color to each square number
      self.populate_dic()
      self.populate_xyz()


   def count_colors(self):
      """return the color that shows up the greatest number of times
         on one face
      """
      dic_count = defaultdict(int)
      for key in self.color_dic.keys():
         dic_count[self.color_dic[key]] += 1
      max_key=""
      max_num=0
      for key in dic_count:
         if dic_count[key] > max_num:
            max_num = dic_count[key]
            max_key = key
      return max_key


   def populate_dic(self):
      """ populate the color dictionary by assigning a color 
          to each square number
      """
      colors_list=["white", "red", "blue", "green", "yellow", "orange"]

      for j in range(1, 55):
         idx = int(random.randrange(0,6))
         self.color_dic[j] = colors_list[idx]
      if self.testing:
         color_max=self.count_colors()
         print "color_dic =", self.color_dic
         import rubik2
         rubik2.print_cube(self.color_dic)
         print "color_max =", color_max


   def populate_xyz(self):
      """  add a unique number for each square
      3 dimensions of rows with 3 rows per dimension (3X3 cube)
      (9 per side) * (6 sides) = 54 squares
      """
      self.row_x[1]=(1, 4, 7, 10, 13, 16, 19, 22, 25, 28, 31, 34)
      junk=[x+1 for x in self.row_x[1]]
      self.row_x[2]=tuple(junk)
      junk=[x+2 for x in self.row_x[1]]
      self.row_x[3]=tuple(junk)

      self.row_y[1]=(1, 2, 3, 48, 51, 54, 27, 26, 25, 43, 40, 37)
      self.row_y[2]=(4, 5, 6, 47, 50, 53, 24, 23, 22, 44, 41, 38)
      self.row_y[3]=(7, 8, 9, 46, 49, 52, 21, 20, 19, 45, 42, 39)

      self.row_z[1]=(10, 11, 12, 46, 47, 48, 36, 35, 34, 37, 38, 39)
      self.row_z[2]=(13, 14, 15, 49, 50, 51, 33, 32, 31, 40, 41, 42)
      self.row_z[3]=(16, 17, 18, 52, 53, 54, 30, 29, 28, 43, 44, 45)


   def rotate( self, row_list, direction ):
      stop=len(row_list)-1
      """ rotate the list passed to the function in forward or reverse 
      direction
      """
      if direction :             ## move forward
         hold_it=self.color_dic[row_list[0]]
         for j in range(0, stop):
            self.color_dic[row_list[j]] = self.color_dic[row_list[j+1]]
         self.color_dic[row_list[-1]] = hold_it
      else:                      ## move backward/reverse
         hold_it=self.color_dic[row_list[-1]]
         for j in range(stop, 0, -1):
            self.color_dic[row_list[j]] = self.color_dic[row_list[j-1]]
         self.color_dic[row_list[0]] = hold_it


   def rotate_x( self, row, direction ):
      """rotate row 1, 2, or 3 of the x dimension
      """
      update_list=list(self.row_x[row])
      if self.testing:
         print "\nbefore rotating", update_list
         for num in update_list:
            print "%2d %s,  " % (num, self.color_dic[num]),
         print
      self.rotate(update_list, direction)
      if self.testing:
         print "\nafter rotating ", update_list
         for num in update_list:
            print "%2d %s,  " % (num, self.color_dic[num]),
         print


##=====================================================================
def test_routine(RT):
   RT.rotate_x(2, 1)
   RT.rotate_x(3, 0)


   ##  test that every square is in exactly two tuples
   test_d=defaultdict(int)
   for j in range( 1, 4 ):
      for num in RT.row_x[j]:     ## all 3 rows along the x dimension
            test_d[num] += 1
      for num in RT.row_y[j]:
            test_d[num] += 1
      for num in RT.row_z[j]:
            test_d[num] += 1

   for key in test_d.keys():
      if test_d[key] != 2:
            print key, "error --> number is", test_d[key]

##=====================================================================
if __name__ == "__main__":
   RT=rubik_test()
   test_routine(RT)

And this is rubik2.py that prints the dictionary.

import sys
import os

def print_cube(dic_in):
   print_list=[ [0, 0, 0, 1, 2, 3, 0, 0, 0], 
             [0, 0, 0, 4, 5, 6, 0, 0, 0],
             [0, 0, 0, 7, 8, 9, 0, 0, 0],
             [37, 38, 39, 10, 11, 12, 46, 47, 48],
             [40, 41, 42, 13, 14, 15, 49, 50, 51],
             [43, 44, 45, 16, 17, 18, 52, 53, 54],
             [0, 0, 0, 19, 20, 21, 0, 0, 0],
             [0, 0, 0, 22, 23, 24, 0, 0, 0],
             [0, 0, 0, 25, 26, 27, 0, 0, 0],
             [0, 0, 0, 28, 29, 30, 0, 0, 0],
             [0, 0, 0, 31, 32, 33, 0, 0, 0],
             [0, 0, 0, 34, 35, 36, 0, 0, 0]]

   ctr = 3
   row_num=0
   print "                     -------------------"
   for row in print_list:
      if row_num == ctr:
         ctr += 3
      str_row=""
      color_row=""
      first = 1
      for el in row:
         if el:
            if first:
               str_row += "   |"
               color_row += "   |"
               first = 0
            str_row += " %3d |" % (el)
            color = dic_in[el]
            color_row += "%5s|" % (color[:5])
         else:
            str_row += "      "
            color_row+="      "
      print str_row
      print color_row
      if 1 < row_num < 6:
         print "   -------------------------------------------------------"
      else:
         print "                     -------------------"
      row_num += 1
      if row_num == 9:
         print "                     -------------------"

[Avatar19]

Cool thanks I'll keep you updated

[dwblas]

Let me know if you want the Tkinter program to display the cube, and I will look further for it.