I remember a fun program from school. Pretty much, it was a maze solver.

Say you have a maze, and a mouse. The mouse, denoted by an uppercase 'M' character, starts out somewhere in the maze. The mouse has to find his way through the maze, to the end.

To add a bit of spice, say there's a piece of cheese at the end of the maze, denoted by the letter 'C'.

A maze would be stored in a file on disk, called something like "maze.dat." The file would be a normal text file, with a maze drawn out in simple characters.

Here's an example: http://pastie.org/5721807

(You can create a more simple / complex maze if you'd like, or maybe find one online.)

So, you've gotta figure out an algorithm that the mouse can use to find its way out.

Tip: be sure to handle the case where the mouse can't find a way out (yet) .. i.e. the infinite loop case.

I hope this helps. Have fun!

Edit: switched to pastie.org link since hn didn't format the maze properly.