The Blocks Problem
Published on Mar 18, 2016, edited on Oct 21, 2016 • Ruslan Ledesma-Garza
The Blocks Problem is problem 101 in the UVa Online Judge. Even though I include the problem description in this post, I encourage you to visit the UVa Online Judge because there you will be able to submit your solution to get it judged.
The problem is to parse a series of commands that instruct a robot arm in how to manipulate blocks that lie on a flat table. Initially there are n blocks on the table (numbered from 0 to n - 1) with block b_i adjacent to block b_i + 1 for all 0 <= i < n - 1 as shown in the diagram below:
|     |     |     |     |     |     |     |
|  0  |  1  |  2  |  3  |  4  | ... | n-1 |
The valid commands for the robot arm that manipulates blocks are:
move a onto b where a and b are block numbers, puts block a onto block b after returning any blocks that are stacked on top of blocks a and b to their initial positions.
move a over b where a and b are block numbers, puts block a onto the top of the stack containing block b, after returning any blocks that are stacked on top of block a to their initial positions.
pile a onto b where a and b are block numbers, moves the pile of blocks consisting of block a, and any blocks that are stacked above block a, onto block b. All blocks on top of block b are moved to their initial positions prior to the pile taking place. The blocks stacked above block a retain their order when moved.
pile a over b where a and b are block numbers, puts the pile of blocks consisting of block a, and any blocks that are stacked above block a, onto the top of the stack containing block b. The blocks stacked above block a retain their original order when moved.
quit terminates manipulations in the block world.
Any command in which a = b or in which a and b are in the same stack of blocks is an illegal command. All illegal commands should be ignored and should have no effect on the configuration of blocks.
The input begins with an integer n on a line by itself representing the number of blocks in the block world. You may assume that 0 < n < 25. The number of blocks is followed by a sequence of block commands, one command per line. Your program should process all commands until the quit command is encountered.
You may assume that all commands will be of the form specified above. There will be no syntactically incorrect commands.
The output should consist of the final state of the blocks world. Each original block position numbered i (0 <= i < n) where n is the number of blocks) should appear followed immediately by a colon. If there is at least a block on it, the colon must be followed by one space, followed by a list of blocks that appear stacked in that position with each block number separated from other block numbers by a space. Don't put any trailing spaces on a line.
There should be one line of output for each block position (i.e., n lines of output where n is the integer on the first line of input).
move 9 onto 1
move 8 over 1
pile 8 over 6
1: 1 9 2 4
Commands are either actions or quit.
We analyze the syntax and semantics of actions to determine a set of primitive operations on blocks. Consider the following action.
---- - ---- -
|   |  |   |
verb |  |   |
|  |   |
object |   |
preposition |
Syntactically, each action consists of a verb, an object, a preposition, and a complement.
Semantically, each action consists of a sequence of three primitive operations. Consider the following state.
The verb indicates the first operation. The first operation is either put back the blocks on top of the object or keep them relative to the object. For the state, move 8 indicates that blocks 7 and 6 be put back in the following way.
The preposition indicates the second operation. The second operation applies to the complement in an analogous way. For the previous state, over 9 indicates that the blocks on top of 9 be kept where they are, thus the previous state remains unmodified.
The third operation is the same for all actions and consists in placing the object and everything above it on top of the stack that contains the complement. For the previous state, the third operation gives the following state.
1: 1 9 2 4 8
We implement the primitive operations and then apply them for each action.
For verb move and preposition onto, we put back blocks on top of a given block by means of function put_back.
#define MAX 25
typedef struct block {
struct block *above;
struct block *below;
int table_loc;
int value;
} block;
block *table[MAX];
void put_back(block *a) {
block *b;
while(a->above != NULL) {
b = a->above;
a->above = NULL; /* .......... A */
b->below = NULL; /* .......... B */
b->table_loc = b->value; /* .. C */
table[b->value] = b; /* ...... D */
a = b;
Array table indicates the state of the table by pointing to the bottom of each stack located on the table. For a given instance of block, pointer above indicates the block above if any and pointer below a block below. Integer table_loc indicates the location on the table of the given block. For a given block, put_back iterates the blocks on top. For each block on top, put_back removes the block from the current stack (lines A and B), sets the current location of the block to its initial position (line C), and puts the block back in its initial position (line D).
For verb pile and preposition over, we keep blocks on top of a given block by doing nothing.
We implement the primitive operation that is common to all actions in function stack.
block *top(struct block *a) {
while(a->above != NULL) a = a->above;
void stack(block *a, block *b) {
block *top_b = top(b);
block *a_below = a->below;
int table_loc = b->table_loc;
/* Remove stack a from its current position. */
if(a_below != NULL) a_below->above = NULL;
else table[a->value] = NULL;
/* Stack stack a onto the top of stack b. */
top_b->above = a;
a->below = top_b;
/* Update stack reference for block a and blocks above a. */
while(a != NULL) {
a->table_loc = table_loc;
a = a->above;
We apply functions put_back and stack to actions in the following main loop.
/* Read the verb. */
Ss(verb);
/* Exit when verb is quit. */
if(verb[0] == 'q') break; /* ............................. A */
/* Read the object. */
Si(v);
a = blocks[v]; /* ........................................ B */
/* Read the preposition. */
Ss(prep);
/* Read the complement. */
b = blocks[v]; /* ........................................ C */
/* Ignore action if it is illegal. */
if(a->table_loc == b->table_loc) continue; /* ............ D */
/* When verb is `move`, put back that are above the object `a`. */
if(verb[0] == 'm') put_back(a); /* ....................... E */
/* When preposition is `onto`, put back the blocks that are above the complement `b`. */
if(prep[1] == 'n') put_back(b); /* ....................... F */
/* Pile object `a` over complement `b`. */
stack(a, b); /* .......................................... G */
We stop as soon as the verb is quit (line A). Array blocks holds a reference to each block in the world, so that we can get a hold of any block in constant time (lines B and C). A command is illegal when blocks a and b have the same location on the table (line D). For the first operation of the action, we apply put_back for verb move and do nothing (line E). Similarly for the second operation (line F). We always stack a on top of the stack that contains b (line G).
Our solution is the following.
#define Si(a) scanf("%d", &a)
#define Ss(a) scanf("%s", a)
a->above = NULL;
b->below = NULL;
b->table_loc = b->value;
table[b->value] = b;
void print_table(int n) {
block *a;
printf("%d:", i);
for(a = table[i]; a != NULL; a = a->above)  {
printf(" %d", a->value);
int n, i, v;
char verb[4], prep[4];
block *blocks[MAX];
block *a, *b;
for(i = 0; i < MAX; i++)
table[i] = blocks[i] = NULL;
/* Read number of blocks `n`. */
Si(n);
/* Initialize world with `n` blocks. */
table[i] = blocks[i] = (block *) malloc(sizeof(block));
blocks[i]->above = NULL;
blocks[i]->below = NULL;
blocks[i]->table_loc = i;
blocks[i]->value = i;
if(verb[0] == 'q') break;
a = blocks[v];
b = blocks[v];
if(a->table_loc == b->table_loc) continue;
if(verb[0] == 'm') put_back(a);
if(prep[1] == 'n') put_back(b);
stack(a, b);
print_table(n);
free(blocks[i]);
We took a compositional approach to solving the problem. We identified primitive operations and implemented each action as a sequence of primitive operations. We avoid searching for blocks by keeping a reference to each block. We avoid computing the location of blocks on the table by tagging each block with its location.