Maze file format

A maze can be thought of as a grid of squares, with some walls between squares, where there are no walls, there is a "passage" to the next square, or location.

One way to visualize this is to imagine that the central area of each square is open space, there are "pillars" holding up a roof at the corners where the squares meet, and between each pillar is either a wall (closed), or a passage (open).

So we can choose to represent a 4 by 4 grid of squares, with a 5 by 5 grid of pillars, by a 9 by 9 array of both walls and open space by using the boolean values of 0 = false = closed (wall or pillar) and 1 = true = open (center of square, or passage).

If we nember rows and columns from 1, position (x,y)

with both x & y odd are pillars, always 0,
with both x & y even are open space, always 1
else either 0=wall or 1=passage

The outside of the maze will be all 0's except for the entrance and the exits. We will use a text file, and specify the size and entrance location on the first line as a comma separated list of integers, and the remaining lines contain the characters '0' and '1' as in this example, where the exits are at (2,6) and (8,6)

Data files: maze1.txt, maze2.txt,...

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