Balanced Directions

Balanced Directions is a Rust crate for modeling directions and movements in a 3x3 grid using a balanced ternary-inspired logic. It provides comprehensive tools to manipulate positions, paths, and directions on a grid-based structure, making it particularly useful in scenarios requiring discrete grid movement, coordinated navigation, or 2D spatial logic.

Balance

Features

Enum Representation (Balance): Represents positions in a 3x3 grid with easy access to their 2D vector representation.
Grid Navigation: Convenient methods for grid-based movement operations (up, down, left, right) as well as rotations, flips, and vector transformations.
Path Manipulation: A Path structure for modeling sequences of movements, offering utilities to normalize, reverse, and transform paths.
Ternary Integration (Optional): Balanced ternary-based coordinates when integrating with the balanced-ternary crate.
#![no_std] Compatibility: A lightweight design for use in embedded or low-level systems.

Examples

Position Representation and Movement

The core Balance enum represents positions in a 3x3 grid. For example, you can easily identify positions such as TopLeft or Center. Use movement methods to perform grid operations.

use balanced_directions::Balance;

fn example_usage() {
    let position = Balance::TopLeft;
    assert_eq!(position.to_vector(), (-1, -1));

    let moved = position.right();
    assert_eq!(moved, Balance::Top);

    let rotated = moved.rotate_left();
    assert_eq!(rotated, Balance::Left);
}

Path Representation and Manipulation

The Path structure enables you to work with sequences of grid movements.

use balanced_directions::{Balance, Path};

fn path_example() {
    let movements = vec![Balance::Top, Balance::Right, Balance::Bottom];
    let path = Path::new(movements);

    assert_eq!(path.len(), 3);
    assert_eq!(path.to_vector(), (1, 0)); // Cumulative movement: right by 1

    let normalized_path = path.normalized();
    assert_eq!(normalized_path.to_vector(), (1, 0)); // Same result after normalization
}

Integration with Balanced Ternary

With the feature "ternary", you can convert grid positions to and from balanced ternary representations.

use balanced_directions::Balance;
use balanced_ternary::Digit;

fn ternary_example() {
    let position = Balance::Top;
    let ternary_pair = position.to_ternary_pair();
    assert_eq!(ternary_pair, (Digit::Zero, Digit::Neg)); // Top is represented as (0, -1)

    let recreated_position = Balance::from_ternary_pair(Digit::Zero, Digit::Neg);
    assert_eq!(recreated_position, Balance::Top);
}

API Overview

`Balance`

The Balance enum represents nine positions of a 3x3 grid:

TopLeft, Top, TopRight
Left, Center, Right
BottomLeft, Bottom, BottomRight

Operations:

Binary operations

Unary operations

`Path`

A collection of Balance movements stored as steps in a sequence. Paths can be created, traversed, and normalized for efficient representation of cumulative movement.

Key Methods:

Construction: new(), from_vector()
Traversal: iter(), iter_mut()
Transformation: normalized(), reversed(), each(), each_zip()

Cases

Grid-based Movement in Games Simulate and manipulate movements within 3x3 environments for character navigation, AI paths, or puzzle logic.
Embedded Robotics Applications Represent grid movements for sensor or actuator navigation without relying on the standard library.
Spatial Modeling or Math-based Algorithms Perform 2D spatial computations with a high-level abstraction for vector-based movements.

Documentation

The complete API documentation is available on docs.rs. It contains details on each type, method, and their use cases.

Related Libraries

balanced-ternary: Provides balanced ternary number manipulations used for optional integration.

balanced-direction 0.1.3