Homework 4: Something Amazing
In this homework, we're going to do something amazing! Mazes!
Take a look at the image below. It's small enough that you can probably figure out how to solve if you stare at it for a bit. (Want a spoiler? Click the image!)
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Of course, that was a fairly small maze. But there's no upper limit on how big a maze could be, at least in principle. Here's a bigger one if you want to try it out.
Meh. Too much work.
I bet we could write a program to solve mazes!
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Funny you should say that, Duck. That's exactly what this assignment is about.
In this assignment, you will develop a program that can solve mazes of arbitrary size, using data structures you've made entirely from scratch (including making a class that works just like std::vector or Python's list()). In doing this work, you'll gain experience with
- Writing code with dynamically allocated arrays of both primitives and objects on the heap.
- Memory management using
newanddelete. - Debugging memory management problems with
valgrind. - Evolving a codebase over time, including writing new classes from scratch.
- Maintaining a Makefile.
- Testing your code (using the CS 70 testing library).
Getting Started
This assignment is paired, and your repository belongs to your pair. This is a new pairing (see the Partner Contract); your repository has already been made and is named after your group.
- Your group is
group (members ) - Your repository for Homework 4 is
repo - You can see it on the web at https://github.com/hmc-cs70-fall2026/
Both of you have push access to that one repository, so you are working in the same place rather than each having a copy to reconcile later.
The link says the page doesn't exist!
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That usually means you are not in the CS 70 GitHub organization yet, rather than that your repository is missing. On the server,
cs70-fix-accesswill check your membership and sort most of this out for you.
Clone your repository on the CS 70 server to get started:
git clone https://github.com/hmc-cs70-fall2026/repo .git
Outline
- Partner Contract
- Part 1: Written Questions
- Part 2: Maze Representation
- Part 3:
CoordVector, Part 1 - Part 4: Solving the Maze, Part 1
- Part 5:
CoordVector, Part 2 - Part 6: Interlude: A Crack in the Maze
- Part 7:
CoordVector, Part 3 - Part 8: Solving the Maze, Part 2
- Part 9: Your Turn!
- Part 10: Check Your Submission
Useful Information
Other Resources
You might find Sections 12.1 and 12.2 of the textbook, C++ Primer, 5th Edition, to be helpful.
As always, ask and answer each other's questions on the Getting Help with Homework 4 page.
In addition, please review the following pages in the Help Pages:
(When logged in, completion status appears here.)