Files
For disambiguation see also Computer file
Files are the eight vertical lines or columns of a Chessboard, labeled from 'A' to 'H', or 'a' to 'h'. Each file contains eight vertically arranged Squares of alternating white and black, or light and dark Color.
Contents
File Names
In a descriptive notation, files are also nominated by the Pieces from their initial position (similar to Pawns), like Rook-Files (a- and h-File, see diagram), Knight-Files (b- and g-File), Bishop-Files (c- and f-File), and Queen-File (d-File) and King-File (e-File), also called Center Files.
| abcdefgh | ||
| 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 | • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • | 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 |
| abcdefgh |
Square Mapping Notes
Whether the square difference of neighbored squares on a rank or file is either 1 or 8, depends on the square mapping. We further rely on little-endian rank-file mapping, which keeps consecutive squares of a rank as neighbored elements in Memory (or register).
Square Difference
Within a 0..63 square index range and the mentioned square mapping (a1 = 0), the difference of two neighbored squares on a File is eight.
Enumeration
As mentioned, on a Chessboard the eight files are labeled from 'A' to 'H'. To make them zero based indices as appropriate for C like programming languages, we enumerate files from 0 to 7. Little-endian file-mapping (as used here) assigns the A-File to index zero. Three bits are required to enumerate from 0 to 7.
A little-endian file-mapping enumeration in C++ might look like this:
enum enumFile {
efAFile = 0,
efBFile = 1,
efCFile = 2,
efDFile = 3,
efEFile = 4,
efFFile = 5,
efGFile = 6,
efHFile = 7,
};
File from Square
Rank-File mapping of squares keeps the file as the three lower bits of a Square index.
file = square & 7; // modulo 8
File-Distance
The file-distance is the absolute difference between two files (their 0-7 indices). The maximum file-distance is 7.
fileDistance = abs (file1 - file2); fileDistance = abs (file2 - file1);
