Describe a data structure suitable for representing a board configuration during a chess game.?

Answer 1

My thoughts...

If you see how a chess game is recorded, its easy to get the data structure. A chess game records each move in x-y notation. x is starting loc, y is final loc. aXb indicates piece 'a' kills piece 'b'. Squares are given A-H horizontally and 1-8 vertically. So B1-C3 (white move) means your horse has moved forward and B8-C6 means black player has moved his horse. To store this data, you need a single linked list with a char[6] as member. '0-0-0' is the biggest value (it denotes queen side castling) you will be storing in it.

struct CHESS {
char move[6];
struct CHESS* next;
};

If you want the ability to rollback the moves, then go for a doubly linked list.

Answer 2

I think a basic array works in most languages. Depending on the language you could use indices that are pertinent to the domain, for example "board(h,5)".

Answer 3

class chessboard
{
int matrix[8][8];
};

Answer 4

An array. Duh.