Question

My question is rather simple.

Let’s suppose I’m executing the algorithm “A star” (search algorithm using a heuristic function to calculate next state to visit).

I want to show in a grid the updates (I will apply it to 8-puzzle problem). How should I do that? I want changes to be clearly visible.. but in my experience if I just do something like Grid[6].showValue(newValue) the GUI will just “stand-by”.

I’m sure this could be done with multi-threading (maybe?) but is there any simpler way?

And one more very easy question if possible:
I wonder if in Java (my IDE is Netbeans) there is any class containing methods for searching like BFS, DFS and A star? If so, could you provide a link to the code of the algorithms (I need to use them as a base for my code.. I can’t include them directly.. you know.. university assignment). I suppose this code is easy to find since Java is a open-source language. Am I wrong?

Thank you very much

Answer 1

Don’t do the processing in the GUI thread.

If we’re talking about swing here, that’s the Event Dispatch Thread; use worker threads as described in the Concurrency in Swing tutorial.