Python Sudoku Solver

Using Donald Knuth's dancing links algorithm

I have not removed the large quantity of commenting from the code so that it may help someone else understand the algorithm better.

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How To Use:

From Command Line:

An example sudoku is given in exampleSudoku.txt. This can be used with multiple arguments each giving a text file containing a sudoku

python3 solve.py exampleSudoku.txt exampleSudoku.txt exampleSudoku.txt

This will solve each file provided in turn and print them out to the console.

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Additionally string arguments can be provided to the solve.py function which will also work.

From Your Code:

The package can be used in the following way:

from dancingLinks import solve

x = [[8, 1, 0, 0, 3, 0, 0, 2, 7],
   [0, 6, 2, 0, 5, 0, 0, 9, 0],
   [0, 7, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
   [0, 9, 0, 6, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0],
   [1, 0, 0, 0, 2, 0, 0, 0, 4],
   [0, 0, 8, 0, 0, 5, 0, 7, 0],
   [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 8, 0],
   [0, 2, 0, 0, 1, 0, 7, 5, 0],
   [3, 8, 0, 0, 7, 0, 0, 4, 2]]

print(solve.sudoku_solver(x))

The solve file needs to be imported and the sudoku_solver function needs to be called on the sudoku you wish to solve.

solve.sudoku_solver(s) returns a 9x9 2D numpy array, NOT a regular python array.