Assignment title: Information
COSC 2006 –Data Structures I
Assignment #3
Due: Wednesday, Nov 2nd, 2016
A gentle introduction to linked lists
This assignment will give you practice with linked lists. You are to write a class
AssassinManager that allows a client to manage a game of assassin. Each person playing
assassin has a particular target that he/she is trying to assassinate. One of the things that
makes the game more interesting to play is that initially each person knows only who
they are assassinating (they don't know who is trying to assassinate them nor do they
know who other people are trying to assassinate). You are working on a program for the
"game administrator" who needs to keep track of who is stalking whom and the history of
who killed whom.
The game of assassin is played as follows. You start out with a group of people who
want to play the game. For example, let's say that we have five people playing whose
names are Joe, Sally, Jim, Carol and Chris. A circular chain of assassination targets is
established (what is called the "kill ring" in the sample log of execution). For example,
we might decide Joe should stalk Sally, Sally should stalk Jim, Jim should stalk Carol,
Carol should stalk Chris and Chris should stalk Joe.
Joe --> Sally --> Jim --> Carol --> Chris
^ |
| V
+--------<--------<---------<--------+
When someone is assassinated, the chain needs to be relinked by "skipping" that person.
For example, suppose that Jim is assassinated first (obviously this would have been by
Sally). Sally needs a new target, so we give her Jim's target: Carol. Thus, the chain
becomes:
+-------->--------+
^ |
| V
Joe --> Sally Jim Carol --> Chris
^ |
| V
+--------<--------<---------<--------+The main program has been written for you and is called AssassinMain. It reads a file of
names, shuffles the names, and constructs an object of type AssassinManager. You are
writing the AssassinManager class. The main program then asks the user for the names
of the victims in order until the game is over (until there is just one player left alive),
calling methods of the AssassinManager class to carry out the tasks involved in
administering the game.
Your class will keep track of two different lists: the list of those currently alive and the
list of those who are dead. Each is to be stored in a linked list. We are requiring you to
use our node class which is called AssassinNode. The AssassinNode class has three data
fields: one for the name of the person, one for the name of the killer and a "next" field to
keep track of the next value in the list. The AssassinNode class appears at the end of this
write-up.
The constructor for the AssassinManager class will be passed an object of type
List. You can manipulate this object the same way you would manipulate an
ArrayList. So you can call methods like size and get and you can write a foreach loop using this object, but you are not allowed to modify it. You will need to
include the following line at the beginning of your class to have access to List:
import java.util.*;
Your class should have the following public methods.
Method Description
AssassinManager(List names) This is your method for constructing an assassin manager
object. It should add the names from the list into the kill
ring in the same order in which they appear in the list. For
example, if the list contains {"John", "Sally", "Fred"},
then in the initial kill ring we should see that John is
stalking Sally who is stalking Fred who is stalking John
(reported in that order). You may assume that the names
are nonempty strings and that there are no duplicate names
(ignoring case). Your method should throw an
IllegalArgumentException if the list is empty.
void printKillRing() This method should print the names of the people in the
kill ring, one per line, indented four spaces, with output of
the form " is stalking ". If there is only
one person in the ring, it should report that the person is
stalking themselves (e.g., "John is stalking John").
void printGraveyard() This method should print the names of the people in the
graveyard, one per line, indented four spaces, with output
of the form " was killed by ". It should
print the names in reverse kill order (most recently killed
first, then next more recently killed, and so on). It shouldproduce no output if the graveyard is empty.
boolean killRingContains(String name) This should return true if the given name is in the current
kill ring and should return false otherwise. It should ignore
case in comparing names.
boolean graveyardContains(String
name)
This should return true if the given name is in the current
graveyard and should return false otherwise. It should
ignore case in comparing names.
boolean gameOver() This should return true if the game is over (i.e., if the kill
ring has just one person in it) and should return false
otherwise.
String winner() This should return the name of the winner of the game. It
should return null if the game is not over.
void kill(String name) This method records the killing of the person with the
given name, transferring the person from the kill ring to the
graveyard. This operation should not change the kill ring
order of printKillRing (i.e., whoever used to be printed first
should still be printed first unless that's the person who
was killed, in which case the person who used to be printed
second should now be printed first). It should throw an
IllegalArgumentException if the given name is not part of
the current kill ring and it should throw an
IllegalStateException if the game is over (it doesn't matter
which it throws if both are true). It should ignore case in
comparing names.
This is meant to be an exercise in Java linked list manipulation. As a result, you will be
required to adhere to the following rules:
You must use our AssassinNode class for your lists. You are not allowed to
modify it.
You may not construct any arrays or ArrayLists or other data structures to
solve this problem. You must solve it using linked sequences of
AssassinNode objects. You can examine the list of Strings passed to the
constructor, but you are not allowed to modify it.
If there are n names in the array of Strings passed to your constructor, you
should ask for a new AssassinNode exactly n times. This means that as
people are killed, you have to move their node from the kill ring to the
graveyard without creating any new nodes.
The main effect of the rules above is that your constructor will create an initial set of
nodes (the initial kill ring) and then your class will not create any more nodes for the rest
of the program execution. That means that you need to solve the problem of moving
people from the kill ring to the graveyard by rearranging references, not by creating new
nodes. Of course, you are allowed to declare local variables of type AssassinNode (likethe variables "current" and "prev" ) because otherwise you can't solve the problem at all.
Local variables of type AssassinNode are not the same as node objects and, therefore,
don't count against the limit of n nodes.
For this assignment we are specifying what data fields you should have in your class.
You should have exactly two data fields: a reference to the front of the kill ring and a
reference to the front of the graveyard. You are not allowed to have any other data fields.
The AssassinNode class has three fields. The first two are fields for storing data called
name and killer (they are used to store the name of a player and the name of the person
who killed that player). The third field is called next and it serves the same purpose as
the next field in the ListNode class.
For this particular program, it is intuitive to store the kill ring in what is known as a
"circular" linked list. Normally lists have the value "null" stored in the next field of the
last node of the list. Such lists are known as "null terminated" lists. In a circular list, the
final element stores a reference to the first element in the list. But most novices find it
difficult to work with a circular list, especially since all of our examples involve nullterminated lists. There is no need to use a circular list to solve the problem, so you
are encouraged to solve it with a null-terminated list. If you feel strongly that you
want to attempt the circular list, you are allowed to do so, but it is likely to make the
program harder to write.
You will want to write your own testing program (AssassinMain, for example, never
generates any of the exceptions you have to handle). When your class is in good shape,
you can use the AssassinMain program to make sure it works properly. A log of
execution for AssassinMain appears at the end of this write-up. Your program should
exactly reproduce the format and general behavior demonstrated in the log, although you
won't exactly recreate this scenario because of the "shuffling" of the names that
AssassinMain performs.
In terms of correctness, your class must provide all of the functionality described above
and satisfy all of the constraints mentioned in this writeup. In terms of style, we will be
grading on your use of comments, good variable names, consistent indentation and good
coding style to implement these operations.
You should name your file AssassinManager.java and should print it out and demon it to
the TA. A collection of files needed for the assignment is included on CMS, including
several name files and several logs of execution. You will need to have
AssassinNode.java, AssassinMain.java, and whatever names file you are using all in the
same directory as your AssassinManager.java in order to run AssassinMain.
AssassinNode Class
// The AssassinNode class is used to store the information for one// player in the game of assassin. Initiallly the "killer" field
// is set to null, but when the person is killed, this should be
// set to the name of the killer.
public class AssassinNode {
public String name; // this person's name
public String killer; // name of who killed this person
public AssassinNode next; // next node in the list
public AssassinNode(String name) {
this(name,null);
}
public AssassinNode(String name, AssassinNode next) {
this.name = name;
this.killer = null;
this.next = next;
}
}
Log of execution (user input underlined)
Welcome to the COSC2006 Assassin Manager
What name file do you want to use this time? names3.txt
Do you want the names shuffled? (y/n)? n
Current kill ring:
Athos is stalking Porthos
Porthos is stalking Aramis
Aramis is stalking Athos
Current graveyard:next victim? Aramis
Current kill ring:
Athos is stalking Porthos
Porthos is stalking Athos
Current graveyard:
Aramis was killed by Porthos
next victim? Athos
Game was won by Porthos
Final graveyard is as follows:
Athos was killed by Porthos
Aramis was killed by Porthos