# Playing around with 8-queens puzzle¶

We will now see and comment some modifications of the code presented previously :

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 int n = 8; Model model = new Model(n + "-queens problem"); IntVar[] vars = new IntVar[n]; for(int q = 0; q < n; q++){ vars[q] = model.intVar("Q_"+q, 1, n); } for(int i = 0; i < n-1; i++){ for(int j = i + 1; j < n; j++){ model.arithm(vars[i], "!=",vars[j]).post(); model.arithm(vars[i], "!=", vars[j], "-", j - i).post(); model.arithm(vars[i], "!=", vars[j], "+", j - i).post(); } } Solution solution = model.getSolver().findSolution(); if(solution != null){ System.out.println(solution.toString()); } 

## Variables¶

First, lines 3-6 can be compacted into:

IntVar[] vars = model.intVarArray("Q", n, 1, n, false);


Doing so, an n-array of variables with [1,n]-domain is created. Each variable name is “Q[i]” where i is its position in the array, starting from 0. The last parameter, set to false, indicates that the domains must be enumerated (not bounded).

## Constraints¶

Second, lines 9 to 11 can be replaced by:

vars[i].ne(vars[j]).post();
vars[i].ne(vars[j].sub(j - i)).post();


where ne stands for not equal. Theses instructions express the same constraints, or more complex expressions, in a convenient way. Here the expression is posted as a decomposition: the AST is analyzed and additional variables and constraints are added on the fly.

Note

Calling e.post() on an expression e is a syntactic sugar for e.decompose().post().

Alternatively, one can decide to generate the possible combinations from the expression and post table constraints [1]. To do so, the expression should be first turned into extension constraint then be posted

vars[i].ne(vars[j]).extension().post();
vars[i].ne(vars[j].sub(j - i)).extension().post();

 [1] such constraint are defined by a set of allowed/forbidden tuples.

## Global constraints¶

Here we posted three groups of 28 constraints. The first group expresses that two queens cannot be on the same column by posting a clique of inequality constraints. The second and third groups express the same conditions for each diagonal.

In other words, the variables of each groups must be all different. Luckily, there exists a global constraint that captures that conditions:

Global constraints specify patterns that occur in many problems and exploit efficient and effective constraint propagation algorithms for pruning the search space.

(“The Complexity of Global Constraints”, C.Bessière, E.Hebrard, B.Hnich and T.Walsh, AAAI 2004.)

We can reformulate the set of constraints to:

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 IntVar[] diag1 = new IntVar[n]; IntVar[] diag2 = new IntVar[n]; for(int i = 0 ; i < n; i++){ diag1[i] = vars[i].sub(i).intVar(); diag2[i] = vars[i].add(i).intVar(); } model.post( model.allDifferent(vars), model.allDifferent(diag1), model.allDifferent(diag2) ); 

Or with Java8 lambdas:

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 IntVar[] diag1 = IntStream.range(0, n) .mapToObj(i -> vars[i].sub(i).intVar()) .toArray(IntVar[]::new); IntVar[] diag2 = IntStream.range(0, n) .mapToObj(i -> vars[i].add(i).intVar()) .toArray(IntVar[]::new); model.post( model.allDifferent(vars), model.allDifferent(diag1), model.allDifferent(diag2) ); 

The constraint on line 8 simply states that all variables from vars must be different. The constraint on line 9 (or 10) states that all variables from a diagonal must be different. The variables of a diagonal are given by IntStream.range(0, n).mapToObj(i -> vars[i].add(i).intVar()).toArray(IntVar[]::new) (lines 4-6) which construct an array of IntVar from the mapping function -> vars[i].add(i).intVar(). This function maps each index i in the [0,n] range to an integer variable equals to vars[i].add(i). The call to the intVar() method effectively turns the arithmetic expression into an integer variable. This extraction may introduce additional variables and constraints automatically.

## Solver¶

To compare the first model and the modified one, we need to get features and measures. A call to solver.showStatistics(); will output commonly used indicators to the console, such as the number of variables, constraints, solutions found, open nodes, etc.

We can either let the solver explore the search space by itself or define a search strategy, like:

solver.setSearch(Search.domOverWDegSearch(vars));


## Updated code¶

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 int n = 8; Model model = new Model(n + "-queens problem"); IntVar[] vars = model.intVarArray("Q", n, 1, n, false); IntVar[] diag1 = IntStream.range(0, n).mapToObj(i -> vars[i].sub(i).intVar()).toArray(IntVar[]::new); IntVar[] diag2 = IntStream.range(0, n).mapToObj(i -> vars[i].add(i).intVar()).toArray(IntVar[]::new); model.post( model.allDifferent(vars), model.allDifferent(diag1), model.allDifferent(diag2) ); Solver solver = model.getSolver(); solver.showStatistics(); solver.setSearch(Search.domOverWDegSearch(vars)); Solution solution = solver.findSolution(); if (solution != null) { System.out.println(solution.toString()); } 

Running the following code outputs something like:

** Choco 4.0.0 (2016-05) : Constraint Programming Solver, Copyleft (c) 2010-2016
- Model[8-queens problem] features:
Variables : 32
Constraints : 19
Default search strategy : no
Completed search strategy : no
1 solution found.
Model[8-queens problem]
Solutions: 1
Building time : 0,000s
Resolution time : 0,012s
Nodes: 6 (491,9 n/s)
Backtracks: 0
Fails: 0
Restarts: 0
Variables: 32
Constraints: 19
Solution: Q[0]=7, Q[1]=4, Q[2]=2, Q[3]=8, Q[4]=6, Q[5]=1, Q[6]=3, Q[7]=5,


Basically, the trace informs that:

• there are 32 variables: the eight queens, and the additional ones induced by expressions extraction,
• there are 19 constraints: three allDifferent constraints, and the additional ones induced by expressions extraction,
• one solution has been found,
• it took 11 ms to find it,
• in the meantime, 6 decisions were made and none of them were wrong.