Need more detail on the routing problem to give a more detailed answer. But GAs are useful when combining parts of good solutions give you better solutions. "Microsoft -- Adding unnecessary complexity to your work since 1987!"

Hello, Please put a picture of the shape that shows the nodes and paths (lines connecting the nodes) An asterisk has six points, not eight. Maybe you mean a star, then people need to know if you are including the inside corners.

Hello, So how's it coming along? Do you understand the concept? With Kind Regards, April Comm100 - Leading Live Chat Software Provider

Sorry, I see nothing difficult in this problem statement. Or maybe is it just that you never wrote a program ? Or are you asking how to represent the network topology and path costs ? For a), scan the array and check if two consecutive indexes are the same. For b), scan the array and check if every pair of indexes are linked in the user-supplied topology (you need some function that will query the topology and tell you if a link exists). For c), the condition is a[5] != 5. For d), use a double loop: the outer loop from i=1 to 4, the inner loop for j=i+1 to 5. In the body of the inner loop, test a[i] == a[j]. Accumulating the path costs is also obvious once you have a query function per network link.

This question may get a better response if posted in the Algorithms Forum[^], as it is not really specific to C/C++. One of these days I'm going to think of a really clever signature.