In an ancient land, the beautiful princess Eve had many suitors. She decided on
the following procedure to determine which suitor she would marry. First, all of the
suitors would be lined up one after the other and assigned numbers. The first suitor
would be number 1, the second number 2, and so on up to the last suitor, number
n. Starting at the first suitor, she would then count three suitors down the line
(because of the three letters in her name) and the third suitor would be eliminated
from winning her hand and removed from the line. Eve would then continue, counting
three more suitors, and eliminating every third suitor. When she reached the end
of the line, she would reverse direction and work her way back to the beginning.
Similarly, on reaching the first person in line, she would reverse direction and make
her way to the end of the line. For example, if there were five suitors, then the
elimination process would proceed as follows:
12345 Initial list of suitors; start counting from 1.
1245 Suitor 3 eliminated; continue counting from 4 and bounce from end
back to
Suitor 4 eliminated; continue counting back from 2 and bounce from
front back to 2.
15
Suitor 2 eliminated; continue counting forward from 5.
1
Suitor 5 eliminated; 1 is the lucky winner.
Write a program that uses an ArrayList or Vector to determine which position you
should stand in to marry the princess if there are n suitors. Your program should
use the ListIterator interface to traverse the list of suitors and remove a suitor. Be
careful that your iterator references the proper object upon reversing direction at
the beginning or end of the list. The suitor at the beginning or end of the list should
only be counted once when the princess reverses the count.