A program to find the longest common subsequence (LCS) of two strings using JSON
A detailed discussion of this project is available here.
The longest common subsequence (LCS) is an intriguing problem that has fascinated me for a while now; I am experimenting with new ways to graphically illustrate specific functions (as opposed to stack architecture) and thought I would use LCS as a case study for developing some new ideas in this area. I attempted to replicate the capabilities of this algorithm here that is labeled "Dynamic Programming."
The file labeled mainProgram.js in the main directory of this repo contains the actual program whereas all other files are references, outdated examples, and other doodles I've been messing around with. This program has a live REPL here online as well.
This single script program is a collection of functions, many of them self-calling, that create a series of JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) objects which in turn represent individual characters in the LCS. What makes this program unique is that it can be expanded upon to search for the LCS in 3 strings or do other stuff like exclude certain characters because of how the characters are represented inside objects. I am not yet good enough at programming to understand how the Dynamic Programming algorithm here works so I cam up with my own method that returns the correct LCS most of the time, but now and then something I call the multiplier needs to be increased in value in order to make the algorithm work properly. The illustration below has some notes on this in the lower right-hand corner.
Here is an illustration of the program and how it works:
GitHub is acting funny lately; It looks like I must first create an empty repo online, then clone that empty repo to my local environment without first having created a README or description on the web browser interface. I think it is relate to this change here because if I follow the process above I end up creating a new repo where I start out in the (master) branch whereas if I create a README file or repo description first, then when I clone the repo I see I am inside the (main) branch, and then when I go to push I get an error that says: src refspec master does not match any -this may be related to a recent change GitHub implemented as I haven't had this problem prior to October 2020.