lem-in

RAKING IN ANTS

1. Document all your code
2. Focus on modular functions with purity
3. Detail your approach to solve the problem

A few lessons learned in this project.

1. Fully form your ideas about what to do before doing it. You had a massive issue with how to set the "successful path" because you didn't have the insight that as long as any one of a vertex's edges leads to the end, it's a "successful path" node.
2. Don't take shortcuts-- understand why something is happening. This is why you had so many errors when setting an array of struct pointers.
3. Have defined error messages-- don't just randomly use 1 and 0 as you wish. DEFINE abstractions.
4. Think about time/space complexity from now on. You used a linked list because the input is dynamic-- but an array of structs would have allowed you to access the graph far quicker. In O(1) time.
5. GNL doesn't free itself. Freeing the line you send in is still your responsibility-- GNL only handles the static buffer.

Problem Approach

1. Parse input and create necessary data structures to hold data, while simultaneously handling error checking in this stage.
2. Pre-set the map with necessary steps to reach goal and whether the path leads to the goal or not.
3. Move ants according to a simple algorithm of, "if not occupied, if successful path, if less steps".

Data Structures Used

1. A struct to hold "farm", the "graph", and some misc. information. Super struct that contains everything to be freed.
2. The graph data structure itself. A linked list of linked lists. Each node in the linked list represents a vertex and holds misc. information, a pointer to a struct called "link" that handles all the edges of said vertex (data is also held in a linked list format), and a pointer to the next vertex. [Linked list of linked lists]
3. All of the ants are held in an array of structure pointers. [Array]