string[int[][]] ??

[Stewart Gordon]

dcoder wrote:
> == Quote from Steven Schveighoffer (schveiguy at yahoo.com)'s article
>> This is what I think you should use:
>> string[int[2]]
<snip>
> board[[0,0]] = "Rook";

Further to what others have said, why use strings?  There are only 12 
possible chess pieces (black and white), plus blank, so probably the 
most efficient approach is

     char[8][8] board;

and use uppercase letters for white and lowercase for black.  This also 
makes it very easy to embed board positions in code, and to write/read 
positions to/from a file (but don't forget to validate).

But there's something else to consider.  Do you want to be able to 
represent:

- whose turn it is to move?
- availability of en passant capture?
- possibility of castling?  (One of my programs uses 'C' to represent a 
rook on which castling may still be possible, and 'R' for one on which 
it isn't.)

> seems to work.  thanks.  But, the foreach loop looks strange.  It looks like it
> takes the hash value of the key:
<snip>

Clearly a bug.  Need to investigate further....

Stewart.