Maze Solver using Graph Traversal (Java)

A console-based maze solving program written in Java.
This project was an academic assignment designed to practice graph representations, Breadth-First Search (BFS), and Depth-First Search (DFS) pathfinding techniques.

Assignment Overview

The goal of this program is to read a maze from a text file, convert it into a graph structure, and solve it by finding a path from the Start (S) to End (E).
Vertices, edges, and traversal logic are manually implemented without external libraries.

Features

The program supports the following functionality:

• Reads maze input from a text file (maze.txt)
• Parses the maze into a graph using adjacency lists
• Solves the maze using Breadth-First Search (BFS) and Depth-First Search (DFS)
• Prints both unsolved and solved maze states to the console
• Shows the path found using X markers
• Validates input to ensure Start and End exist

How It Works

• Maze is loaded into a 2D array of characters
• Open tiles become graph nodes, and connecting paths become edges
• BFS finds the shortest path
• DFS finds a depth-based path (not guaranteed to be the shortest)
• The final maze is printed with the discovered route highlighted