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[QUOTE="Ed Morton, post: 1691264"]
Not at all. Likewise, I appologise if I was rude or sounded offended.

I've added an "OT" label to the subject as I'm about to talk about 
algorithms rather than ANSI C:

I took another look at the code and, though I don't get the details, the 
comments sound like you're (very roughly) attempting to deal the cards 
until some predefined outcome, and backtracking when you hit dead-ends. 
If so, did you consider using, say, bit-state-hashing with a depth-first 
(recursive-descent) algorithm, e.g. something like this pseudo-code:

play() {
	deal(); /* determine possible next states from the
		 * current state, e.g. card hand combinations.
		 */
	for (state in possibleStates) {
		if (state == the_desired_result) {
			return;
		} else {
			idx = hash(state);
			if (hashTbl[idx] == 0) {
				/* This is a new configuration
				 * so continue
				 */
				hashTbl[idx] = 1;
				play();
			}
			/* else, we've seen this configuration
			 * before so move on or backtrack
			 */
		}
	}
}

main() {
	bool hashTbl[size] = { 0 };
	play();
	printState(state);
}

Regards,

Ed.
[/QUOTE]

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