I am implementing a 15-puzzle solver by Ant Colony Optimization, and I am thinking a way of efficiently hashing each state into a number, so I waste the least amount of bytes.
A state is represented by a list of 16 numbers, from 0 to 15 (0 is the hole).
Like:
[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,0]
So I want to create an unique number to identify that state. I could convert all the digits to a base 16 number, but I don't think that's very efficient Any ideas?.
Thanks