Re: [gnugo-devel] Carpenter square test suite

[Gunnar Farneback]

Allan wrote:
> I saw that the todo list noted carpenter's square in particular as
> something you'd like a few tests for. I've placed a few files for a small
> regression test suite at:

Actually that was just an example to make the todo item more concrete.
Guess we have to come up with a new example now. :-)

> http://www.faldara.co.uk/Carpenter.html
> 
> I hope it's useful. All my knowledge of this comes from Davies' Life and
> Death, but I doubt copyright is an issue - I've used a different shape for
> the outer group and the sequences are known to be optimal, so I take it
> nobody owns them. :)

I see no copyright problems with this. Changing the outside position
is generally a good idea since it can simplify the program's analysis
and gives us some further protection against any copyright
complications.

Regarding the test suite itself it's usually preferrable to have life
and death problems in the form of owl_attack and owl_defend tests.
This has a couple of advantages:
1. No risk for interference from unrelated moves elsewhere on the
board.
2. Less computations needed, making the test suite run faster.
3. Allows testing for ko results.

We could use the test suite as is but it would be an improvement to
convert it to owl_attack/owl_defend. Do you feel like giving that a
try? Please ask if you're not sure how to do it.

/Gunnar