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Set Class Hierarchy

A winning Mah Jongg hand has five scoring sets exactly one of which is a pair. There are four varieties of set: pair, three of a kind, three in a row of the same suit, and four of a kind. The most common winning hands have 14 tiles: 4 sets of three and a pair. Each four of a kind extends the hand by one tile to accomodate the larger set.

A Mah Jongg Hand object, then, is a list of Tiles. This class needs a method, mahjongg that returns True is the hand is a winning hand. The evaluation is rather complex, because a tile can participate in a number of sets, and several alternative interpretations may be necessary to determine the appropriate use for a given tile.

Consider a hand with 2, 2, 2, 3, 4 of bamboo. This is either a set of three 2's and a non-scoring 3 and 4, or it is a pair of 2's and a sequence of 2, 3, 4.

The mahjongg method, then must create five Set objects, assigning individual Tiles to the Sets until all of the Tiles find a home. The hand is a winning hand if all sets are full, there are five sets, and one set is a pair.

We'll cover the design of the Set classes in this section, and return to the design of the Hand class in the next section.

We can create a class hierarchy around the four varieties of Set: pairs, threes, fours and straights. A PairSet holds two of a kind: both of the tiles have the same name or the same suit and rank. A ThreeSet and FourSet are similar, but have a different expectation for being full. A SequenceSet holds three suit tiles of the same suit with adjacent ranks. Since we will sort the tiles into ascending order, this set will be built in ascending order, making the comparison rules slightly simpler.

We'll define a Set superclass to hold a sequence of Tiles. We will be able to add new tiles to a Set, as well as check to see if a tile could possibly belong to a Set. Finally, we can check to see if the Set is full. The superclass, Set, is abstract and returns NotImplemented for the full. The sublasses will override this methods with specific rules appropriate to the kind of set.

class  
Set

  def __init__(self):
  def __str__(self):
  def canContain(self, aTile ):
  def add(self, aTile ):
  def full(self):
  def fallback(self, tileStack ):
  def pair(self):
 
  • The Set __init__ function should create an internal list to store the tiles.

  • The add method appends the new tile to the internal list. A pop function can remove the last tile appended to the list.

  • The superclass canContain method returns True if the list is empty; it returns False if the list is full. Otherwise it compares the new tile against the last tile in the list to see if they are equal. Since most of the subclasses must match exactly, this rule is what is used. The straight subclass must override this to compare suit and rank correctly.

  • The superclass fallback pushes all of the tiles from the Set back onto the given stack. The superclass version pushes the tiles and then returns None. Each subclass must override this to return a different fallback Set instance.

  • The superclass pair returns False. The PairSet subclass must override this to return True.

An important note about the fallback is that the stack that will be given as an argument in tileStack is part of the Hand, and is using is maintainted by doing tileStack.pop(0) to get the first tile, and tileStack.insert( 0, aTile ) to push a tile back onto the front of the hand of tiles.

We'll need the following four subclasses of Set.

  • FourSetSpecializes Set for sets of four matching tiles. The full method returns True when there are four elements in the list. The fallback method pushes the set's tiles onto the given tileStack; it returns a new ThreeSet with the first tile from the tileStack.

  • ThreeSetSpecializes Set for sets of three matching tiles. The full method returns True when there are three elements in the list. The fallback method pushes the set's tiles onto the given tileStack; it returns a new SequenceSet with the first tile from the tileStack.

  • SequenceSetSpecializes Set for sets of three tiles of the same suit and ascending rank. The belongs returns True for an empty list of tiles, False for a full list of tiles, otherwise it compares the suit and rank of the last tile in the list with the new tile to see if the suits match and the new tile's rank is one more than the last tile in the list. The full method returns True when there are three elements in the list. The fallback method pushes the set's tiles onto the given tileStack; it returns a new PairSet with the first tile from the tileStack.

  • PairSetThe full method returns True when there are two elements in the list. The fallback method is inherited from the superclass method in Set; this method returns None, since there is no fallback from a pair. This subclass also returns True for the pair method.

The idea is to attempt to use a FourSet to collect a group of tiles. If this doesn't work out, we put the tiles back into the hand, and try a ThreeSet. If this doesn't work out, we put the tiles back and try a SequenceSet. The last resort is to try a PairSet. There is no fallback after a pair set, and the hand cannot be a winner.


 
 
  Published under the terms of the Open Publication License Design by Interspire