2005Sp CS61C Homework 2 : Life 1D

Life 1D : Rule 30

Due 23:59:59 on 02-02-2005

TA In Charge: Steven

Reading

You should read Wolfram's excellent Elementary Cellular Automata for context and a full description of the problem/simulation.

Problem

You are to implement a one-dimensional variant of Conway's Game of Life, heretofore called "Life 1D". Specifically, you will write the following program in C (from scratch) which supports the following:

Usage: Life1D <rows> <rule>
    This program simulates 1D Life: the simplest class of one-dimensional
    cellular automata in a <ROWS=rows+1> x <COLS=2*rows+1> grid starting
    with a single live cell in the middle of the top row using rule <rule>. 
    These 1D rules are defined in Wolfram's Elementary Cellular Automata:
    http://mathworld.wolfram.com/ElementaryCellularAutomaton.html
    This program will print to stdout data in plain PBM file format.
    This output can be easily viewed using the xv command or converted to a 
    another format using the pbmto* and ppmto* utilities. A plain ascii PBM 
    file can be created by adding a header line "P1 <WIDTH> <HEIGHT>" 
    and followed by a grid of data (0 = dead = black, 1 = live = white).
    A call to "man pbm" can help answer questions about about the format.
    Add a comment on the first line with a brief description of the image.
  Arguments:
    <rows> is a positive integer specifying the number of rows to generate
    (not counting the first "seed row" which is all dead except for a central
    live cell). The columns are computed automatically -- enough so that
    the rule, if it were to grow in the normal triangular pattern, would
    just perfectly reach the edge. Off the board is considerered "dead".
    <rule> is a number from 0-255 specifying the rule to use
  Examples:
    See Rule 60 : http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Rule60.html
    unix% Life1D 3 60
P1 7 4 ## 3 rows of Life1D (Rule 60) by Yourfirstname Yourlastname
0 0 0 1 0 0 0 
0 0 0 1 1 0 0 
0 0 0 1 0 1 0 
0 0 0 1 1 1 1 
    See Rule 90 : http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Rule90.html
    unix% Life1D 5 90
P1 11 6 ## 5 rows of Life1D (Rule 90) by Yourfirstname Yourlastname
0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0
0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0
1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1
    See Rule 250 : http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Rule250.html
    unix% Life1D 4 250
P1 9 5 ## 4 rows of Life1D (Rule 250) by Yourfirstname Yourlastname
0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 
0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 
0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 
0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 
1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1

Handling Error Cases

If the input doesn't satisful the constraints (i.e., rows or rule aren't valid integers in the specified range), you should print the Usage string above (just copy it into your code).

Test your code!

A great way to test your code is to run it through all the rules with 15 rows and check it against the catalogue of images on the bottom of the Elementary Cellular Automata page. You can generate a gif image by piping the output into ppmtogif and redirecting the output to a file. E.g.,

unix% Life1D 3 60 | ppmtogif > Life1D_3_60.gif

Here are the gifs resulting from the examples above:

Life1D 3 60

Life1D 5 90

Life1D 4 250

Submission

Submit a single file Life1D.c by creating a directory called hw2 with your Life1D.c file in it. From within this directory run "submit hw2". Be certain that your program accepts command line arguments for <rows> and <rule>. If you interactively prompt for these values rather than accepting command line args your program will hang and fail the autograder.

Extra for Experts

If you really enjoy this project, you might want to consider implementing a Totalistic Cellular Automaton, otherwise known as "Life1D in grayscale/color". Enjoy!