towards a checker for Towers of Hanoi

In the first semester of Intro to CS

…people wrote Racket programs to generate instructions that Michael the Bot could follow.
[under construction for incremental development. Someday provide the format of the instructions here.]
The aim was to have Michael the Bot move any number of disks…

• from a "source" tower (names of towers are to be supplied)
• to a "target" tower
• using a "spare" tower as required

…while adhering to these rules:

0. Touch only the top disk on any tower.
1. Never put a larger disk on a smaller disk.

Many of the programs produced seemingly-valid instructions, and we tested one on four disks. But nobody wants to put a few thousand years into a test of 64 disks only to discover that there was an error that ends the universe prematurely.

desiderata: a web page that will…

• accept inputs:

  • the towers' names
  • the number of disks
  • instructions suitable for Michael the Bot

• simulate following the instructions, checking for rule violations

• produce a web page showing the configuration after each instruction, that is, the disks on each tower.

sample output, still in design phase

[echo the abbot's request, like "Move 4 disks from Hanoi to HCMC using Da Nang as a spare"]

while you wait

Listen to the official theme song for erroneous programs, and especially for Towers of Hanoi instructions: