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Tower of Hanoi

The Tower of Hanoi is a mathematical puzzle involving three pegs and multiple disks of different sizes that must be moved according to specific rules. The objective is to transfer all disks from one peg to another without placing a larger disk on top of a smaller one, and it can be solved in a minimum of 2^n - 1 moves. The solution involves a recursive algorithm that breaks down the problem into smaller parts, moving n-1 disks, the largest disk, and then the remaining disks to the destination peg.

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31 views2 pages

Tower of Hanoi

The Tower of Hanoi is a mathematical puzzle involving three pegs and multiple disks of different sizes that must be moved according to specific rules. The objective is to transfer all disks from one peg to another without placing a larger disk on top of a smaller one, and it can be solved in a minimum of 2^n - 1 moves. The solution involves a recursive algorithm that breaks down the problem into smaller parts, moving n-1 disks, the largest disk, and then the remaining disks to the destination peg.

Uploaded by

Rita Poddar
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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DATA STRUCTURE - TOWER OF HANOI

http://www.tutorialspoint.com/data_structures_algorithms/tower_of_hanoi.htm Copyright © tutorialspoint.com

Tower of Hanoi, is a mathematical puzzle which consists of three tower pegs and more than one
rings; as depicted below −

These rings are of different sizes and stacked upon in ascending order i.e. the smaller one sits over
the larger one. There are other variations of puzzle where the number of disks increase, but the
tower count remains the same.

Rules
The mission is to move all the disks to some another tower without violating the sequence of
arrangement. The below mentioned are few rules which are to be followed for tower of hanoi −

Only one disk can be moved among the towers at any given time.
Only the "top" disk can be removed.
No large disk can sit over a small disk.

Here is an animated representation of solving a tower of hanoi puzzle with three disks −

Tower of hanoi puzzle with n disks can be solved in minimum 2 n −1 steps. This presentation shows
that a puzzle with 3 disks has taken 2 3 −1 = 7 steps.

Algorithm
To write an algorithm for Tower of Hanoi, first we need to learn how to solve this problem with
lesser amount of disks, say → 1 or 2. We mark three towers with name, source, destination and
aux onlytohelpmovingdisks. If we have only one disk, then it can easily be moved from source to
destination peg.

If we have 2 disks −

First we move the smaller one top disk to aux peg


Then we move the larger one bottom disk to destination peg
And finally, we move the smaller one from aux to destination peg.

So now we are in a position to design algorithm for Tower of Hanoi with more than two disks. We
divide the stack of disks in two parts. The largest disk (nth disk) is in one part and all other n − 1
disks are in second part.

Our ultimate aim is to move disk n from source to destination and then put all other n − 1 disks onto
it. Now we can imagine to apply the same in recursive way for all given set of disks.

So steps to follow are −

Step 1 − Move n-1 disks from source to aux


Step 2 − Move nth disk from source to dest
Step 3 − Move n-1 disks from aux to dest

A recursive algorithm for Tower of Hanoi can be driven as follows −

START
Procedure Hanoi(disk, source, dest, aux)

IF disk == 0, THEN
move disk from source to dest
ELSE
Hanoi(disk - 1, source, aux, dest) // Step 1
move disk from source to dest // Step 2
Hanoi(disk - 1, aux, dest, source) // Step 3
END IF

END Procedure
STOP

To check the implementation in C programming, click here.


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