You've probably seen a maze-solving program before. For example, there are many screen savers that draw a maze on the screen and then solve it. Here are two companion scripts that implement this as a JAPH!

 

The first one is maze.pl, the maze-generating script. By default, it draws a 9 by 33 maze (21 characters by 70 characters), but you can also specify height and width on the command line, such as perl maze.pl 8 20 .

$x=1+rand($w=pop||33);$y=1+rand($h=pop||9);sub p{print@_}@m=($t=[10
,(8)x($w+1)],(map[(2,(0)x$w,2)],1..$h),$t);sub w{$m[$y][$x]|=$_}{(@d=
($m[$y-1][$x]?():1,$m[$y+1][$x]?():2,$m[$y][$x-1]?():4,$m[$y][$x+1]?()
:8))?(@d>1?$q[@q]=[$y,$x]:1,$_=$d[rand@d],w,s/1/$y--;2/e||s/2/$y++;1/e
||s/4/$x--;8/e||s/8/$x++;4/e,w):(($y,$x)=@{shift@q||last});redo}sub r{
$m[pop][1+rand$w]|=2}r;r-2;for$y(0..$h){p$",$m[$y][$_]&8?$":'#'for@w=
0..$w;sub P{p" \n"}P;p$m[$y][$_]&2?$":'#','#'for@w;P}p$"x(2+$w*2);P
[download]

 

The second one is snake.pl, which solves a maze generated by maze.pl. It does the old trick of always following the right-hand wall.

$|=@j='Just another Perl hacker, '=~/./gs;sub p{print@_}p$H="\e[H",
"\e[J",map@$_,@m=map[//g],<>;@y=$"='';$_="@{$m[1]}";/\S+/g;p"$H ",' '
x($x[0]=pos);$_=C;{$o=0;$y=$y[-1];$x=$x[-1];s|A|$m[$y][++$x]=~/ /?$o=C
:D|e||s|C|$m[++$y][$x]=~/ /?$o=B:A|e||s|B|$m[$y][--$x]=~/ /?$o=D:C|e||
s|D|$m[--$y][$x]=~/ /?$o=A:B|e;$o||redo;$y^$y[-2]||$x^$x[-2]?($y[@y]=$
y,$x[@x]=$x):(--$#y,$#x--,$j-=2,p"\e[D ");$y&&$x&&$y<$#m&$x<$#{$m[0]}
&&do{p"\e[$_\e[D$j[$j++]";$j%=@j;select$,,$,,$,,.06;redo}}p$H,$/x@m
[download]

 

You can pass the output from maze.pl directly into snake.pl (perl maze.pl | perl snake.pl) or you can save the maze to a file and solve it later (perl maze.pl > mymaze; perl snake.pl mymaze).

A few caveats for these scripts:

• They're not quite warning safe. Sorry. :)
• snake.pl uses console escape sequences to move around the screen, so it may not work on all platforms.
• If you use a maze that is bigger than your window, the snake won't be lined up with the walls.
• Similarly, if you type any characters in the window where snake.pl is running, the snake won't stay lined up with the walls. Instead just sit back and enjoy.

The maze generating algorithm was taken from Games::MazeD2 by John M. Gamble.

Enjoy!