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Data Structure & Algorithms - Tower of Hanoi

The Tower of Hanoi puzzle involves moving disks of different sizes stacked in descending order across three pegs following three rules: only one disk can be moved at a time, only the top disk can be removed from a peg, and no disk can be placed on top of a smaller disk. The minimum number of moves required to solve a Tower of Hanoi puzzle with n disks is 2^n - 1. An algorithm to solve the puzzle recursively involves dividing the disks into two parts - the largest disk and the remaining disks - and moving the parts between the pegs following three steps.

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271 views3 pages

Data Structure & Algorithms - Tower of Hanoi

The Tower of Hanoi puzzle involves moving disks of different sizes stacked in descending order across three pegs following three rules: only one disk can be moved at a time, only the top disk can be removed from a peg, and no disk can be placed on top of a smaller disk. The minimum number of moves required to solve a Tower of Hanoi puzzle with n disks is 2^n - 1. An algorithm to solve the puzzle recursively involves dividing the disks into two parts - the largest disk and the remaining disks - and moving the parts between the pegs following three steps.

Uploaded by

Kashif Raffat
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Data Structure & Algorithms - Tower of Hanoi

Tower of Hanoi, is a mathematical puzzle which consists of three towers (pegs) and more than one
rings is as depicted −

These rings are of different sizes and stacked upon in an ascending order, i.e. the smaller one sits
over the larger one. There are other variations of the 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. A few rules to be followed for Tower of Hanoi are −

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.

Following 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 2n−1 steps. This presentation shows
that a puzzle with 3 disks has taken 23 - 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
(only to help moving the disks). 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 (top) disk to aux peg.


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

So now, we are in a position to design an 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 the second part.

Our ultimate aim is to move disk n from source to destination and then put all other (n1) disks onto
it. We can imagine to apply the same in a recursive way for all given set of disks.

The 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 == 1, 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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