Re: A free auxiliary program
Hi, jomapil, the application is interesting and helpful specially for beginners and medium players and can be used in order to not forget combinations.
However I have seen some initial "anomalies", for instance, the bitwise OR, if you enter 2 cells for a cage it admits the duplication for the number, i.e, "5|" gives 1|4, 1|5, 4|5 and 5|5, etc. (6|6 for "6|", ...), perhaps that could be corrected. For the 3-cell cages the problem is not produced with this operation.
In a similar way, the division, i.e, with the result of "1:", in 3 cells, gives the 1:1:1. This problem also appears with the exponentiation: for "1^" gives the 1^1^1 or for "16^" gives the 2^2^2 ...
For the case of three cells (only this case) it would be interesting to distinguish if the 3 cells are in-line or L-shape (asking for the aspect before the calculations).
Another curious thing: Observe the last sunday's Dec 18, 12x12, for the multiplication of the cage "7680" (6-cell cage) it gives 10*4*4*4*4*3 (among the other solutions) but a 6-cell cage can never spread over 4 rows or 4 columns (it can be seen in my post "The shape of the cages ... "), I know this can be taken into account by the puzzler but supressing the forbidden combinations, that is, reducing the number of combinations makes easier the election, I think. The situation would be similar with a 7-cell cage (max number of cells in your program which is consistent with the actual puzzles), it is impossible to have 5 identical numbers since a 7-cell cage can not spread over 5 rows or 5 columns.
Finally, for instance, the 10x10 of the Dec 20, tuesday, the cage "46+" (7-cell cage), if you ask for the combinations, the number of them is so big that the scrolling bar of the window provided does not permit to see all, only a small part of them.
Perhaps a wider screen and the distribution of the combinations in the form of a table instead of in the form of a list would be interesting specially when there are many combinations. Anyway I am sure you will be providing new versions of your application.