Conway's Game of Life

Conway's Game of Life
You are encouraged to solve this task according to the task description, using any language you may know.

Conways game of life is described here:

A cell C is represented by a 1 when alive or 0 when dead, in an m-by-m square array of cells. We calculate N - the sum of live cells in C's eight location neighbourhood, then cell C is alive or dead in the next generation based on the following table:

   C   N                 new C
   1   0,1             ->  0  # Lonely
   1   4,5,6,7,8       ->  0  # Overcrowded
   1   2,3             ->  1  # Lives
   0   3               ->  1  # It takes three to give birth!
   0   0,1,2,4,5,6,7,8 ->  0  # Barren

Assume cells beyond the boundary are always dead.

Although you should test your implementation on more complex examples such as the glider in a larger universe, show the action of the blinker (thre adjoining cells in a row all alive), over three generations, in a 3 by 3 grid.

Python

<python>import random from collections import defaultdict

printdead, printlive = u'-#' maxgenerations = 3 cellcount = 3,3 celltable = defaultdict(int, {

(1, 2): 1,
(1, 3): 1,
(0, 3): 1,
} )

1. 2. Start States
2. blinker

u = universe = defaultdict(int) u[(1,0)], u[(1,1)], u[(1,2)] = 1,1,1

1. 1. toad
2. u = universe = defaultdict(int)
3. u[(5,5)], u[(5,6)], u[(5,7)] = 1,1,1
4. u[(6,6)], u[(6,7)], u[(6,8)] = 1,1,1

1. 1. glider
2. u = universe = defaultdict(int)
3. maxgenerations = 16
4. u[(5,5)], u[(5,6)], u[(5,7)] = 1,1,1
5. u[(6,5)] = 1
6. u[(7,6)] = 1

1. 1. random start
2. universe = defaultdict(int,
3. # array of random start values
4. ( ((row, col), random.choice((0,1)))
5. for col in range(cellcount[0])
6. for row in range(cellcount[1])
7. ) ) # returns 0 for out of bounds

for i in range(maxgenerations):

   print "\nGeneration %3i:" % ( i, )
   for row in range(cellcount[1]):
       print "  ", .join(str(universe[(row,col)])
                           for col in range(cellcount[0])).replace(
                               '0', printdead).replace('1', printlive)
   nextgeneration = defaultdict(int)
   for row in range(cellcount[1]):
       for col in range(cellcount[0]):
           nextgeneration[(row,col)] = celltable[
               ( universe[(row,col)],
                 -universe[(row,col)] + sum(universe[(r,c)]
                                            for r in range(row-1,row+2)
                                            for c in range(col-1, col+2) )
               ) ]
   universe = nextgeneration</python>

Sample output:

Generation   0:
   ---
   ###
   ---

Generation   1:
   -#-
   -#-
   -#-

Generation   2:
   ---
   ###
   ---