****************************************************
* evolution of cooperative behavior
* through iterated prisoner's dilemma simulations
****************************************************

--- what is this ------------------------------------

This is a sample project for a "Programming Workshop" course
that implements "players" in a prisoner's dilemma simulation.

With a pool of players using different strategies, one can
search for the best strategy by an evolutionary algorithm
that weeds out players that do poorly while adding in new
players similar to those that do well.  

Or at least that's the goal.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma
for a discussion of what this problem and references to 
Robert Axelrod's 1984 analysis.  The vocabulary I use 
is from wikipedia's entry as of March 15 2007.

   Jim Mahoney (mahoney@marlboro.edu)
   Marlboro College
   Spring 2007

--- using it ---------------------------------------------

Either use the scripts :
 $ ./compile
 $ ./Tests
 $ ./PrisonersDilemma

Or invoke java commands directly :
 $ javac *.java                            
 $ javadoc -d docs *.java
 $ java edu.marlboro.cs.prisoner.Tests
 $ java edu.marlboro.cs.prisoner.PrisonersDilemma

--- files -------------------------------------------------------

 readme.txt                  this overview
 history.wiki                diary notes

 Game.java
 Player.java                 
 RandomPlayer.java
 TrivialTestEngine.java
 Tests.java                  contains main() for tests

 docs/                       API created by javadoc
 edu/marlboro/cs/prisoner    symbolic link to . (to keep java happy)

 compile*                    script to compile and make docs
 Tests*                      script to run the Tests class

 (coming ??)
 Arena.java                  collection of players, run against each other
 PrisonersDilemma.java       contains main()
 PrisonersDilemma*           script to run the PrisonersDilemma class 

--- my  package and directory structure ------------------------

All the .java files here are in the package edu.marlboro.cs.prisoner.

Since the java compiler therefore expects to find them in
edu/marlboro/cs/prisoner, but I want to leave them here in this
project directory (no matter where that happens to be), I've created a
symbolic link that loops back here.

Creating the symbolic link:
 $ export ROOT=`pwd`
 $ mkdir -p edu/marlboro/cs
 $ cd edu/marlboro/cs
 $ ln -s ../../.. prisoner

Then to compile and run the tests, for example.
 $ javac *.java
 $ java edu.marlboro.cs.prisoner.Tests

Having "." and "edu/marlboro/cs/prisoner" both refer to this same directory
is of course a total kludge, but java doesn't leave me a lot of good choices.

I've never liked java's package system and assumptions about class and
file names; this is an example of why.

--- subversion and rsync  -----------------------------------------------

I'm using subversion to archive all these files, 
which is what's providing the version strings like the ones below.

The sorts of commands issued to archive the files are things like.
 $ svn add SomeRandomFile.java
 $ svn commit -m "added SomeRandomFile"

I've also set up a script (which runs manually from the laptop) to
keep this project consistent between the server and my laptop, so I
can work on it in my office or from home.

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 $Id: readme.txt 12775 2007-04-17 15:23:12Z mahoney $