You will find here all the code and data necessary to reproduce my tests.

Python

The Python solver is contained in file hangman.py. To run it on the supplied large input set, the syntax is:

python hangman.py [-w [num_workers]] < B-large-1.in > B-large-1.out

With the -w option, the multi-worker solver is used. You can ask for a specific number of workers, or let Python decide, generally based on the number of available CPUs on your system. You can even run with one worker: it should take almost the same time as with the sequential solver. There is a small overhead for starting a new process and marshalling data between the main process and the worker, but it should stay small.

Without the -w option, the sequential solver is used: only the main program processes the input.

Java

The Java solver source file is hangman.java. To compile it, you need at least JDK 1.5. Just run:

javac hangman.java

Then, the syntax to run it from the command line is:

java -cp . hangman [-w [num_workers]] < B-large-1.in > B-large-1.out

The meaning of the command-line options are the same as for Python (see above). If you run the program on Windows, the result file will contain CR-LF line endings, so you need to compare the results with diff -b.

JavaScript

The JavaScript sources are spread over a few files, partly because web workers API needs to run a worker from a file, partly because I'm still thinking about how to write a useful Pool API. I'd like to have the same kind of interface as the one provided by Python and hide the message passing protocol that takes place between workers and the master thread.

hangman.html

is what you should open to run the solver

driver.js

is the generic Pool/master implementation

hangman_driver.js

is the part that parses the input and posts tasks to the worker pool

webwork.js

is the almost generic worker

hangman_task.js

is the JavaScript implementation of the solver

To run the program in non-web worker mode, just click the "Run without workers" button. Be aware that the browser will probably tell you every few seconds that a script is making the page unresponsive. You need to allow it to continue if you want it to finish.

To run the program with web workers, you need to create a pool first. When you do that, a row of green squares will appear, to track the activity of allocated workers. Then, launch the computation with "Run". The "Queue size" will move briefly to 10, workers will turn red when busy. The result will appear once the queue is empty and all workers have finished.

C++

The C++ source is hangman.cpp. To compile it with GCC (at least version 4.2 for OpenMP support), do:

g++ -O3 -std=c++0x hangman.cpp -o hangman -fopenmp

Then run with:

./hangman [-w [num_workers]] < B-large-1.in > B-large-1.out

The meaning of the command-line options are the same as for Python (see above).

Supporting files

B-large-1.in

is the large input set.

B-large-1.check

is the expected result. If you produce your result in B-large-1.out, you can check that the result is correct with:

diff -b B-large-1.out B-large-1.check

The -b option is necessary to account for possible differences in whitespace and line endings.