Knight's Travails - Chessboard Path Finder

This project implements a function knightMoves to find the shortest path a knight takes on a chessboard to move from a starting position to a target position. The chessboard is represented as an 8x8 grid, and the knight can move in an "L" shape: two squares in one direction and one square perpendicular, or one square in one direction and two squares perpendicular.

Problem Description

Given a starting position and a target position on a chessboard, the function finds the shortest path the knight takes to move from the start to the target, outputting all squares the knight visits along the way.

Example Usage:

knightMoves([0, 0], [1, 2]);
// Output: [[0, 0], [2, 1], [1, 2]]

knightMoves([0, 0], [3, 3]);
// Output: [[0, 0], [2, 1], [3, 3]] or another valid shortest path

Features

• Shortest Path: The function returns the shortest path the knight takes to reach the target square.
• Graph Representation: The chessboard is modeled as a graph, where each square is a node, and the knight's moves are the edges between them.
• Breadth-First Search (BFS): BFS is used to guarantee the shortest path is found.

Installation

To use the knightMoves function, simply clone the repository or add the knightMoves.js file to your project.

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/yourusername/knights-travails.git

2. Navigate to the project directory:

   cd knights-travails

3. Install dependencies (if you want to run tests):

   npm install

4. Add knights-travails.js to your project and import it where needed:

   import knightMoves from './knights-travails';

Running Tests

This project includes Jest tests to verify the correctness of the knightMoves function. To run the tests, ensure you have Jest installed and then execute:

npm test

, then press A.

Function Signature:

knightMoves(start: [number, number], end: [number, number]) => [number, number][]

Arguments:

• start: The starting position on the chessboard, represented as an array [x, y] where x and y are between 0 and 7.

• end: The target position on the chessboard, represented as an array [x, y] where x and y are between 0 and 7.

Returns:

• An array of coordinates representing the shortest path the knight takes from the start to the end.

Example:

console.log(knightMoves([0, 0], [1, 2])); // Output: [[0, 0], [2, 1], [1, 2]]

console.log(knightMoves([3, 3], [0, 0])); // Output: [[3, 3], [2, 1], [0, 0]]

Contributing

Feel free to fork the project and submit issues or pull requests if you have suggestions or improvements.

License

This project is open-source and licensed under the MIT License.