anthonyberet wrote: > Hello again - rather a newbie here... > > I want to work on a sudoku brute-forcer, just for fun. > > I am considering different strategies, but first I need to decide on the > data-structure to use for the progress/solution grid. > > This being a square, I would have used a 9x9 2-dimensional array in my > teenage years back in the 80's, using BASIC. > > What is the equivalent way to store data in python? - It isn't obvious > to me how to do it with lists. > > 'scuse me for being thick - but give me a little pointer and I will do > the rest.
Another approach as already proposed could be, that you define your grid as a dictionary in a following way: grid = {} for column in range(1,10): for row in range(1,10): grid[(column, row)] = None # then you can refer to the cells of the 'array' like: colNo=5; rowNo=4 valueInCellOfGrid = grid[(colNo, rowNo)] # and set them like: grid[(colNo, rowNo)] = 9 print valueInCellOfGrid print grid[(colNo, rowNo)] I haven't checked it out, but I can imagine, that this approach could even have a speed advantage over a list of lists what can become important in a 'brute-forcer' approach. Best way is probably to use one of available numeric libraries with array support, but this is another story. Claudio Claudio -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list