Pawn Move Validator

Recently I've been interviewed for some job position. To my surprise I was asked to sit at the computer and modify an existing program. The program performs tracking for chess game - i.e. moving pieces on the board according to given list of moves and printing out the resultant position.

I was required to add functionality to check the correctness of pawn moves and rotation of sides between moves (i.e. that none of players make two moves at once).

Those who are acquainted with Java (and have some idea of using JUnit, maven and github can amuse themselves with the full version of this task, as it was proposed to me (I only made some minor changes and translation).

For others here is the adaptation of the task.

Problem Statement

You are to track the sequence of moves in Chess game and check the validity of the pawn moves (other moves are considered correct). As an answer print the number of the incorrect move.

The game is each time started from the initial position:

  +-----------------+
8 | r n b q k b n r |
7 | p p p p p p p p |
6 | - - - - - - - - |
5 | - - - - - - - - |
4 | - - - - - - - - |
3 | - - - - - - - - |
2 | P P P P P P P P |
1 | R N B Q K B N R |
  +-----------------+
    a b c d e f g h

As you see we denote:

• white pieces with uppercase letters (P N B R Q K) and black with lowercase (p n b r q k);
• pawn with P, kNight with N, bishop with B, rook with R, queen with Q and king with K;
• rows with numbers from 1 to 8 and columns with letters from a to h.

The move of a piece is described by its starting and ending coordinate, for example:

• e2e4 - white pawn from e2 goes to e4;
• g8f6 - black knight from g8 jumps to f6;
• d1h5 - white queen from d1 travels to h5 (very stupid move though correct);
• f6h5 - black knight from f6 captures the white queen at h5.

After these four moves the position will look like following:

  +-----------------+
8 | r n b q k b - r |
7 | p p p p p p p p |
6 | - - - - - - - - |
5 | - - - - - - - n |
4 | - - - - P - - - |
3 | - - - - - - - - |
2 | P P P P - P P P |
1 | R N B - K B N R |
  +-----------------+
    a b c d e f g h

Pawn move rules

You should check the moves of pawns according to following set of rules:

• pawns move only forward, white go from the row 2 up and black go from the row 7 down;
• if pawn does not capture anything, it moves straight forward by the same column;
• pawn advances exactly one row per move, except the first move when it can optionally go two squares forward (e.g. e2e4 for white or d7d5 for black);
• pawn could not move forward if the path is blocked by any piece;
• capture is performed by forward diagonal jump by one square to the adjacent column (e.g. e4d5 for white or c7b6 for black) - of course the landing square should be occupied by the enemy piece which is captured.

We do not regard or check the three special cases: the capture "en passant", the promotion of the pawn to other piece at the last row, the move which opens attack on the king or does not remove an existing one (it is illegal).

Input data will contain the number of testcases in the first line.
Next lines will contain one testcase - i.e. one sequence of moves to be checked - each. Of course each sequence should be started from initial position.
Answer should for each sequence tell the number of first incorrect move (starting from 1) or 0 if the whole sequence is valid. Separate answers for different test-cases with spaces.

Example:

input data:
3
b2b3 b8c6 c2c4 c7c5
e2e4 g8f6 d1h5 f6h5
d2d4 e7e5 g1f3 e5d4 c2d4 d8e7

answer:
4 0 5