Tower of Hanoi

UNIT-2 ASSIGNMENT
(02)

FOR

DATA STRUCTURE

SUBMITTED BY:
ROBERT LOITONGBAM
SECOND YEAR(CSE)
ROLL NO.:40
 Tower of Hanoi
DEFINITION:

Tower of Hanoi is a puzzle problem. Where we have three

stands and n discs. Initially, Discs are placed in the first
stand. We have to place discs into the third or destination
stand, the second or auxiliary stand can be used as a
helping stand.

But there are some rules to follow:

 We can transfer only one disc for each movement.

 Only the topmost disc can be picked up from a stand.
 No bigger disc will be placed at the top of the smaller
disc.

EXPLANATION AND DIAGRAM:

This problem can be solved easily by recursion. At first,

using recursion the top (n-1) discs are placed from source
to auxiliary stand, then place the last disc from source to
destination, then again place (n-1) disc from auxiliary
stand to destination stand by recursion.
 Tower of Hanoi

Example:

Suppose no of disks are 4 and the starting rod is ‘A’, the auxiliary
rod is ‘B’ and the ending rod is ‘C’.

In each step first we move the top most node of peg ‘A’ to auxiliary
peg ‘B’ and then finally move to ‘C’ which is the desired peg.

Initially:
All disks are stack on peg ‘A’ with order of their size being Disk3 <
Disk2 < Disk1

Peg A Peg B Peg C

Disc 3

Disc 2

Disc 1
 Tower of Hanoi
Moving Disc 3 To Peg C:

Peg A Peg B Peg C

Disc 2

Disc 1 Disc 3

Moving Disc 2 To Peg B:

Peg A Peg B Peg C

Disc 1 Disc 2 Disc 3

Moving Disc 3 To Peg B:

Peg A Peg B Peg C

Disc 3

Disc 1 Disc 2

Moving Disc 1 To Peg C:

Peg A Peg B Peg C

Disc 3

Disc 2 Disc 1
 Tower of Hanoi

Moving Disc 3 To Peg B:

Peg A Peg B Peg C

Disc 3 Disc 2 Disc 1

Moving Disc 2 To Peg C:

Peg A Peg B Peg C

Disc 3 Disc 2

Disc 1

Moving Disc 3 To Peg C:

Peg A Peg B Peg C

Disc 3

Disc 2

Disc 1

Now this is the desired solution as all of the disks are stacked on
peg ‘C’.
 Tower of Hanoi

Tower of Hanoi Algorithm:

Step 1: Start the program.
Step 2: Input number of disks.
Step 3: Declare a function which takes the number of
disks, starting disk, auxiliary disk and final disk as
argument and recursively calls itself twice.
Step 4: Call the function.
Step 5: End the Program.

PROGRAM:

#include<bits/stdc++.h>
void toh(int, char, char, char);

int main(){
char source = 'A', destination='B', Auxiliary='C';
int n;
cout<< "Enter value of n\t";
cin>> n;
toh(n, source, destination, Auxiliary);
return 0;
}

void toh(int n, char source, char dest, char aux){

if(n==1){
cout<< "%c -> %c \n"<< source<< dest;
return;
}
toh(n-1, source, aux, dest);
cout<< "%c -> %c \n"<< source<< dest;
toh(n-1, aux, dest, source);
}
 Tower of Hanoi

Output:

Enter the number of disks: 3

1. Move disk 1 from A to C
2. Move disk 2 from A to B
3. Move disk 1 from C to B
4. Move disk 3 from A to C
5. Move disk 1 from B to A
6. Move disk 2 from B to C
7. Move disk 1 from A to C

Time Complexity: O(2n)

In each function call, we are calling the function twice so time

complexity of tower of hanoi program is O(2n).

Space Complexity: O(n)

Space of the recursive stack is of order n, so space complexity of

tower of hanoi program is O(n).
 Tower of Hanoi

Conclusion:

In this Tower of Hanoi tutorial, you learned what the TOH

problem is. After that, you discovered the logical approach
to implement a solution for the TOH problem. Finally, you
also looked at the programming implementation of the
TOH solution using the C programming language.

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