How do I DRY up this code?

Question

https://code.sololearn.com/clq489rPgJJJ/?ref=app

I brute forced it quite easily, but now I have 3-4 lines' worth of code checking rows, columns and diagonals. It works but it's highly inefficient.

Answer 1

A few thoughts from the small to the big:

- `not(A) and not(B) and not(C)` can be rearranged to `not(A or B or C)` which is technically shorter. It's called DeMorgan's law!

So it turns out that your checks on line 18 and 54 are the exact same but negated.

- You could offload those checks into a function:

def game_over(board):
return (board[0] == board[3] == ...)
or (...)
...

And then you don't have to repeat yourself twice:

while(not game_over(board)):

if(game_over(board) and not cheat):

- The ideal way to DRY up your code is to write seperate functions for checking a single row/column/diagonal. It will probably make your code *longer* but DRYer for sure.

Think about how you would solve a 100x100 tic tac toe puzzle!