Games::Chess::Referee Perl Module

Games::Chess::Referee
Version 0.003
Gregor N. Purdy
mailto:gregor@focusresearch.com
http://www.focusresearch.com/gregor/index
2006-03-26

Copyright © 1999-2006 Gregor N. Purdy. All rights reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

This is an early conversion of my first chess-related Perl program, chess.pl, which provided just enough functionality to permit tracking the movements of pieces throughout a game. One notable feature is the ability to provide incomplete ply notation, allowing the program to figure out, for example, the type of the piece being moved, or whether the ply represents a capture (x) or occupation (-). This functionality will be broadened in the future to permit partial space specification (e.g. `cxd4'), and other cases of standard chess move notation.

PREREQUISITES

This module uses a patched version of the module Games::Chess, version 0.002. The patches are included in the gc-0.002.diff file. The diffs were created by the command:

diff -Naur Games-Chess-0.002 Games-Chess-0.002.patch
They are intended to be used with the patch program (see below).

The patches are to Chess.pm and Chess.pod, and fix a small bug and address some discrepancies between the documentation and the code:

  1. Changed `Games::Piece->new' to `Games::Chess::Piece->new' in one place.
  2. can_castle() is changed to accept a color and a piece, per the documentation. Its previous implementation accepted a single character code from the set {'K', 'Q', 'k', 'q'} instead.
  3. A corresponding change later in the code to use can_castle() in this modified way.
  4. Changed the POD documentation to use the name halfmove_clock() instead of halfmove() for the accessor function for the halfmove clock.

INSTALLING

  1. Download Games::Chess and this package from your favorite CPAN mirror to your favorite staging area ($STAGE below):
    cd $STAGE
    ftp ...
    bin
    cd ...
    get Games-Chess-0.002.tar.gz
    cd ...
    get Games-Chess-Referee-0.002.tar.gz
    bye
  2. Unpack your distributions:
    tar xvzf Games-Chess-0.002.tar.gz
    tar xvzf Games-Chess-Referee-0.002.tar.gz
  3. Apply the patches to Games::Chess:
    cp -a Games-Chess-0.002 Games-Chess-0.002.patch
    cd Games-Chess-0.002.patch
    patch -p1 < $STAGE/Games-Chess-Referee-0.002/gc-0.002.diff
  4. Make, test and install Games::Chess:
    cd $STAGE/Games-Chess-0.002.patch
    perl Makefile.PL
    make
    make test
    make install
  5. Make, test and install Games::Chess::Referee:
    cd $STAGE/Games-Chess-Referee-0.002
    perl Makefile.PL
    make
    make test
    make install
  6. Take a look at tryme and the documentation and write some scripts that use the code.
  7. Send your comments and suggestions to the author of this module and the author of Games::Chess, as appropriate.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS

Eventually, there will be a Games::Chess::Move module/class, that will interact with the Position and Piece classes to provide an integrated environment for working with chess games. The Referee module will be converted into a class.

Very abbreviated notation (such as xb4, c5, dxe7, QxR, etc. would be great, with ambiguity detection).

Also, much more work needs to be done to create a fully functional referee. Subsequent to that, however, Perl-built chess bots could be possible, and the referee could be enhanced to the point that it could be used for on-line chess matches.

Interesting future work would be to wrap the GNU chess engine in a Perl blanket. This would be most interesting if it was done in such a way that we weren't just putting a layer over the terminal interface, but rather, turning the core of the C code into a Perl-wrapped engine that interfaces with the board via the Referee.

CHANGES FROM VERSION 0.001

Modified to use Games::Chess by Gareth Rees for the underlying board management and operations. Uses a privately modified version of Gareth's Games::Chess code, version 0.002. Patches have been submitted to Gareth.

Included a small script, tryme, that has the same test game in it as the test t/referee.t. Run the tryme script thusly (if running before installing the package):

perl -Iblib/lib tryme
so you can see its output.

Removed the exit() statement that prevented the t/referee.t test from doing anything very interesting [:-)].

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Copyright © 1999-2006 Gregor N. Purdy