rpcfn-3-shortest_path¶ ↑
My submission for Ruby Challenge #3: Short Circuit
rubylearning.com/blog/2009/10/30/rpcfn-short-circuit-3/
Features¶ ↑
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100% RSpec test coverage
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Works in both Ruby 1.8 and 1.9
Explanation¶ ↑
I decided to play with a couple different concepts in this submission:
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Rather than using a known shortest path algorithm such as Dijkstra’s, I wanted to write my own from scratch with the goal of it being simple (even if it meant being computationally expensive).
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I wanted to make the algorithm recursive because I so rarely use recursion when building websites (my day job).
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I wanted to use Ruby’s infinity to represent the distance of an empty/dead-end path. It had a nice side effect of allowing me to remove all nil checks from the code.
Usage¶ ↑
require 'shortest_path' include ShortestPath shortest_path('A', 'B', [['A', 'B', 40], ['A', 'B', 50]]) => [['A', 'B', 40]] unused_paths('A', 'B', [['A', 'B', 40], ['A', 'B', 50]]) => [['A', 'B', 50]]