Problem with nested lists as arrays

[Terry Reedy]

<benjamin.cordes at blawrc.de> wrote in message 
news:1108382521.266024.281620 at g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...

'Having trouble' is too vague to figure out.  However, I would delete this:

>    def getEmptySlot(self):
>        i = 0
>        j = 0
>        while i  <= self.dim-1:
>            while j  <= self.dim-1:
>                if self.elements[j][i] == -1:
>                    return [j, i]
>                j = j+1
>            j = 0
>            i = i + 1

and maintain an .empty attribute, which is trivially updated in

>    def swapElements(self, fromx, fromy, tox, toy):
>        dummy = self.elements[toy][tox]
>
>        self.elements[toy][tox] = self.elements[fromy][fromx]
>        self.elements[fromy][fromx] = dummy

as (fromy,fromx).  Note that there is no need to pass tox, toy to this 
routine.  Indeed, I would include the last two lines in your move routine. 
Since dummy is always the same object, I would also just keep it as 
self._dummy instead of looking it up each time.

Terry J. Reedy