Push Swap

The Push Swap project is a challenge within the 42 School curriculum aimed at deepening students' understanding of sorting algorithms, data structures, and algorithmic complexity in C. The goal is to sort a stack of integers using a minimal number of operations, with the constraints of using only two stacks and a limited set of operations.

Task

The task was to implement a program that sorts a stack of integers using a set of predefined operations. The program needs to handle various tasks such as:

• Sorting a stack (stack_a) using an auxiliary stack (stack_b) with a limited set of operations.
• Implementing efficient algorithms to sort stacks of varying sizes with the fewest possible operations.
• Handling edge cases such as empty input, duplicated numbers, and large sets of numbers.

Key objectives included:

• Designing algorithms that efficiently sort small and large sets of integers with minimal operations.
• Implementing operations such as sa, sb, ss, pa, pb, ra, rb, rr, rra, rrb, and rrr to manipulate the stacks.
• Ensuring the program handles various edge cases, including invalid input and edge cases in sorting.

Key Achievements

• Optimized Sorting Algorithms: Successfully implemented sorting algorithms tailored to handle small sets (3-5 elements) and larger sets (up to 500 elements) with minimal operations.
• Efficient Stack Manipulation: Developed a robust set of operations to manipulate the stacks, ensuring accurate and efficient sorting with minimal moves.
• Comprehensive Edge Case Handling: Integrated thorough error checking and handling to manage edge cases, ensuring the program's reliability and correctness in various scenarios.

Installation

To install the Project, follow these steps:

1. Clone the repository: git clone git@github.com:jakobsitory/02_push_swap_42CC.git
2. Navigate to the project directory: cd 02_push_swap_42CC
3. Build the project: make

Usage

The push_swap program is used to generate a list of operations that will sort the stack of integers provided as arguments. It should be executed as follows:

./push_swap [list_of_integers]

Visualizing the algorithm:

To visualize the sorting process using the push_swap_visualizer. To use the visualizer:

1. Clone the visualizer repository and follow the installation instructions provided.
2. Run your push_swap program with the list of integers and pipe the output to the visualizer.