Sudoku Helper

Sudoku Helper is a C++ program that helps solve Sudoku puzzles interactively. It was built as a learning exercise in object‑oriented design. The project models the puzzle using Square, Board, and Cluster classes and provides a small command line interface for marking squares, undoing or redoing moves, and printing the state of the board.

Features

Reads traditional or diagonal Sudoku puzzle files (see puz1.txt or puzd-1.txt).
Represents each square with possible values and tracks fixed numbers.
Organizes rows, columns and 3×3 boxes via Cluster objects for fast rule checking.
Simple in‑terminal menu for marking squares and printing the updated board and clusters.
Written in modern C++20 with minimal external dependencies.

Building

The project can be built using a recent C++ compiler or via CMake (requires CMake 3.29 or newer).

# build with g++ (requires C++20 support)
g++ -std=c++20 main.cpp Square.cpp tools.cpp Game.cpp Board.cpp Cluster.cpp State.cpp Errors.cpp -o sudoku

# or use CMake
cmake -S . -B build
cmake --build build

Usage

Run the resulting sudoku executable. The program loads the puzzle from puz1.txt by default. After the initial board is printed, follow the menu prompts to mark a square or quit the program.

$ ./sudoku
Sudoku Main Menu
         M: Mark
         U: Undo
         R: Redo
         Q: Quit
Enter code of desired item:

Marking a square requires entering the row, column, and value separated by spaces (e.g., 1 2 3). The board and affected clusters are displayed after each move.

Puzzle Format

The first line of a puzzle file contains the game type (t for traditional or d for diagonal). The next nine lines list the puzzle grid using digits for fixed values and - for empty squares. Example:

t
4-6--7--3
-9-5-6-7-
------58-
---9--34-
3-------8
-78--4---
-17------
-8--2-9-6
9--7--8-4

Contributing