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JavaScript In Practice: ES6 And Beyond

Connect-4 Solver

Discover how to implement an ES6 solution to detect a winner in Connect-4 by checking four consecutive symbols horizontally and vertically. Explore array manipulation, recursion, and practical use of arrow functions and map to simplify the logic for game state evaluation.

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Suppose an 8*6 Connect-Four table is given. Each cell of the table is either empty (null), or contains the player’s number from the possible values 1 and 2. Determine if any player has won the game by connecting four of their symbols horizontally or vertically. For simplicity, ignore diagonal matches.

Solution:

As there is no example data, we have to model the table ourselves.

Node.js
const createEmptyTable = () => 
    new Array( 8 ).fill( null ).map( 
        () => new Array( 6 ).fill( null ) 
    );

This simple arrow function returns an empty 6*8 array:

Node.js
let table = createEmptyTable()
console.log(table)

It is evident that we will need a function that checks all elements of the array for four consecutive matches. I encourage you to implement this function yourself. Reading my ...