Sudokusolver

Library with a builtin CLI frontend to solve sudoku puzzles using a backtracking algorithm.

In order to solve a sudoku puzzle efficiently Knuth's Algorithm-X is used after the exact cover problem has been applied to it.

The purpose of this project was to learn python and its ecosystem.

Usage

Before you can start, you have to install the sudokusolver automatically by pip or manually by hand first. I recommend pip though:

python3 -m pip install --user git+https://github.com/luxmeter/sudokusolver

You can read how to install pip here.

Solve sudokus using the CLI

python3 -m sudokusolver sudoku_puzzle.csv

Whereas the csv file follows a particular format pattern:

_,_,4,  9,_,3,  6,_,_
5,_,6,  2,_,_,  1,3,_
1,_,_,  8,5,_,  _,9,4

8,_,_,  1,6,2,  _,4,7
4,_,_,  _,_,_,  5,6,_
_,_,_,  7,_,_,  _,_,3

_,_,_,  6,2,_,  3,_,9
_,_,_,  _,_,1,  _,_,_
_,_,2,  _,3,_,  4,_,_

##Solve sudokus using the library

You can use the sudoksusolver also in your application by importing the sudokusolver package. It contains several modules dealing with the importing, visualization and solving of sudokus. See the API reference for a detailed description.

To solve a sudoku, you only need the solver module

from sudokusolver import solver
...
solution = solver.solve(fixed_candidates)

The fixed_candidates as well as the solution is a list of strings presenting the numbers written into the cells. Like the csv file, the strings obey a particular format pattern: R{rowNumber}C{columnNumber}#{number}.

If you want to import a csv file, you can use the importer module:

from sudokusolver import importer
...
fixed_candidates = importer.imp_candidates('sudoku_puzzle.csv')

Documentation

• See online http://sudokusolver.readthedocs.org/en/latest/
• Or build by yourself:

    python3 setup.py build_sphinx -b html

Note that you need to install Sphinx first, before you can build the documentation.