OK so a while back I started work on my oh so awesome Hamlet's Monkey project. Anyway, I figured if the loop is too large, it'll just choke my CF instance, so this might be better handled as a java project.
I'm going to focus on the red light method as the green light method is just pretty simple. Basically, loop for a specified number of times grab a random letter and then check it against the Hamlet string. If we're successful add a new letter, if not, the monkey has to start again!
So here's the crux of it all:
private static char generateRandomLetter(){
Random rnd = new Random();
char strChar = lstAlphabet.charAt(rnd.nextInt(lstAlphabet.length()));
return strChar;
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
int intCount = 0;
String strSubString = "";
String strShakespeare = Shakespeare.replaceAll("[^a-zA-Z]", ""); //Shakespeare without spaces etc
String strMonkeyString = "";
String strBestSoFar = "";
while (intCount < intNumLoops) {
intCount++;
//generate the random guess, one keystroke at a time
strMonkeyString = strMonkeyString + Character.toString(generateRandomLetter());
strSubString = strShakespeare.substring(0,strMonkeyString.length());
System.out.print(strMonkeyString + "==" + strSubString);
//check if we're done
if(strMonkeyString.equalsIgnoreCase(strSubString)){
System.out.println(" ** Nice guess, move along please.");
if(strSubString.length() > strBestSoFar.length()){
strBestSoFar = strSubString;
}
}else{
System.out.println("");
strMonkeyString = "";
}
}
trackProgress(intCount,strBestSoFar);
}
What was more interesting was how to store the results. What I decided to do was to write to a file using a JSON struct. This file could then store the results which could be read in every time the class was run and we'll know its all time success rate.
So again, not a complicated couple of functions. trackProgress gets called from the main function. It just reads the results from the file, and tries to decode the two JSON variables into local variables. If the current best guess is better than the one on file, we use the new one. Otherwise we just add a running total of the number of loops we've done. The read and write functions should be pretty self explanatory.
@SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
private static void writeResultsToFile(long intKeyStrokes, String strBestGuess){
//create json object
JSONObject obj = new JSONObject();
obj.put("intKeyStrokes", intKeyStrokes);
obj.put("strBestGuess", strBestGuess);
//write it to file
try {
FileWriter file = new FileWriter(strFileName);
file.write(obj.toJSONString());
file.flush();
file.close();
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
private static JSONObject readResultsFromFile(){
JSONParser parser = new JSONParser();
JSONObject jsonObject = new JSONObject();
try {
//read from file
Object obj = parser.parse(new FileReader(strFileName));
jsonObject = (JSONObject) obj;
} catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
} catch (ParseException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
return jsonObject;
}
private static void trackProgress(int intKeyStrokes, String strBestGuess){
JSONObject jsonObject = readResultsFromFile();
String strBestGuessFromFile = "";
long intKeyStrokesFromFile = 0;
String strNewBestGuess = "";
long intNewStrokes = 0;
if(jsonObject.get("intKeyStrokes") != null && jsonObject.get("strBestGuess") != null){
strBestGuessFromFile = (String) jsonObject.get("strBestGuess");
intKeyStrokesFromFile = (long) jsonObject.get("intKeyStrokes");
}
//whichever string is longer, this is the new best guess
if(strBestGuess.length() > strBestGuessFromFile.length()){
strNewBestGuess = strBestGuess;
}else{
strNewBestGuess = strBestGuessFromFile;
}
//number of key strokes is cumulative
intNewStrokes = intKeyStrokes + intKeyStrokesFromFile;
writeResultsToFile(intNewStrokes,strNewBestGuess);
System.out.println("Finishing - " + intNewStrokes + " keystrokes-" + strNewBestGuess);
}
To import this library into your project in eclipse, simply right click on the project go down to "Build Path" -> "Add External Archives..." then add the json-simple.1.1.1.jar Simple :)
Here's the full code: http://pastebin.com/h29t3bD7 Have fun!
