Advent Calendar 2024
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The gift is presented by Packy Anderson. Today he is talking about his solution to The Weekly Challenge - 286. This is re-produced for Advent Calendar 2024 from the original post.
Spammer Game
For some reason, my brain saw “Order Game” and I thought “Circle Game“. Perhaps because my wife and I watched a Joni Mitchell documentary last week.
Anyway, let’s go round and round to the Perl Weekly Challenge 286.
Task #1: Self Spammer
Write a program which outputs one word of its own script / source code at random.
A word is anything between whitespace, including symbols.
Approach
I fell out of my Raku-first approach because I immediately knew what I wanted to do in Perl.
Perl
I knew I was going to use the FILE token to read the program contents. But I’m always cautious and I want to see things working in intermediate steps as I write it, so once I read the contents and split them into words, I dumped the output to make sure I was getting what I thought I should.
#!/usr/bin/env perl
use v5.40;
my @words;
open my $fh, '<', __FILE__;
while (my $line = <$fh>) {
push @words, split /\s+/, $line;
}
close $fh;
use Data::Dumper::Concise; print Dumper(\@words);
$ perl/ch-1.pl
[
"#!/usr/bin/env",
"perl",
"use",
"v5.40;",
"my",
"\@words;",
"open",
"my",
"\$fh,",
"'<',",
"__FILE__;",
"while",
"(my",
"\$line",
"=",
"<\$fh>)",
"{",
"",
"push",
"\@words,",
"split",
"/\\s+/,",
"\$line;",
"}",
"close",
"\$fh;",
"use",
"Data::Dumper::Concise;",
"print",
"Dumper(\\\@words);",
]
Wait, what’s happening on line 20 of the output? I’m getting an empty string, and that’s not a word by the definition of the problem, so I’d have a 1/30 chance of printing invalid output. So I looked at how it’s happening.
The line that produces it is line 7 in my input script, because the line starts with whitespace, and my split on whitespace will produce an empty element just like splitting the string ,A,B,C on commas will produce a leading empty element. I could strip the line of leading and trailing whitespace before splitting it, or I could strip out empty elements from the result of the split. The latter was the solution that first came to me:
#!/usr/bin/env perl
use v5.40;
my @words;
open my $fh, '<', __FILE__;
while (my $line = <$fh>) {
push @words, grep { length($_) } split /\s+/, $line;
}
close $fh;
use Data::Dumper::Concise; print Dumper(\@words);
$ perl/ch-1.pl
[
"#!/usr/bin/env",
"perl",
"use",
"v5.40;",
"my",
"\@words;",
"open",
"my",
"\$fh,",
"'<',",
"__FILE__;",
"while",
"(my",
"\$line",
"=",
"<\$fh>)",
"{",
"push",
"\@words,",
"grep",
"{",
"length(\$_)",
"}",
"split",
"/\\s+/,",
"\$line;",
"}",
"close",
"\$fh;",
"use",
"Data::Dumper::Concise;",
"print",
"Dumper(\\\@words);",
]
Great! Now I just get rid of the Dumper import and print, and replace it with a statement to print out a word from @words at random. rand(N) will get us a random fractional numbers from 0 – N. We can pass this through int to get integers, and if we want to include N in the possible output, we need to add 1 to N:
#!/usr/bin/env perl
use v5.40;
my @words;
open my $fh, '<', __FILE__;
while (my $line = <$fh>) {
push @words, grep { length($_) } split /\s+/, $line;
}
close $fh;
say $words[ int(rand($#words + 1)) ];
View the entire Perl script for this task on GitHub.
$ perl/ch-1.pl
v5.40;
$ perl/ch-1.pl
(my
$ perl/ch-1.pl
];
Raku
Two of the the tasks for implementing this in Raku were things I’d never done before: reading files and specifically getting the name of current file. Fortunately, for the latter, there’s a compile-time variable, $?FILE. For reading files, I went to the docs. I found out slurp is built into Raku, so I was able to bundle reading the entire file, splitting it into non-empty entries and putting that all in an array into a single line. Note that I’m passing the result of the split through the Slip class so it’s flattened as it’s appended to @words.
#!/usr/bin/env raku
use v6;
my @words = $?FILE.IO.slurp.split(/\s+/, :skip-empty).Slip;
say @words[ (0 .. @words.elems).rand.Int ];
View the entire Raku script for this task on GitHub.
Python
In another example of my “Python is just like Perl, only weirder” mantra, Python as it’s own __file__ token. And split handles the problem of leading whitespace for us:
If sep is not specified or is None, a different splitting algorithm is applied: runs of consecutive whitespace are regarded as a single separator, and the result will contain no empty strings at the start or end if the string has leading or trailing whitespace.
To add the split elements to the list without adding them as lists themselves, we want to use extend, and to get the randomized word, we want to use randrange from the random module.
#!/usr/bin/env python
from random import randrange
words = []
with open(__file__) as fh:
words.extend(fh.read().split())
print(f'{ words[ randrange( len(words) ) ] }')
View the entire Python script for this task on GitHub.
Elixir
In Elixir, the current file can be obtained through ENV.file, and Enum.random/1 will produce a random element from an enumerable, so we don’t have to figure out what the length of the word list is, we can just pass the list in and get back a random element.
#!/usr/bin/env elixir
{:ok, contents} = File.read(__ENV__.file)
word = contents
|> String.split(~r{\s+}, trim: true)
|> Enum.random
IO.puts(word)
View the entire Elixir script for this task on GitHub.
Task #2: Order Game
You are given an array of integers, @ints, whose length is a power of 2.
Write a script to play the order game (min and max) and return the last element.
Approach
Really, the trickiest bit of this is keeping track of whether you’re doing a min or a max. I decided to just use an integer 1 that I then multiplied by -1 each time through to flip back and forth.
Raku
I might have found some clever way to avoid repeating code, but it seemed most straightforward to just have an if/else that handled calling the functions.
sub orderGame(@ints is copy) {
my $loop = 0;
my @explain;
while (@ints.elems > 1) {
my @new;
$loop++;
@explain.push("Operation $loop:");
@explain.push("");
my $flip = 1;
for @ints -> $a, $b {
my ($val, $func);
if ($flip == 1) {
$val = min($a, $b);
$func = 'min';
}
else { # $flip is -1
$val = max($a, $b);
$func = 'max';
}
@new.push($val);
@explain.push(" $func" ~ "($a, $b) = $val");
$flip *= -1; # switch from min to max and back
}
@explain.push("");
@ints = @new; # replace list with new list
}
return @ints[0], @explain.join("\n");
}
When I tried to use the string " $func($a, $b) = $val" on line 24, I got No such method 'CALL-ME' for string 'min' because it was trying to turn $func($a, $b) into an actual function call.
View the entire Raku script for this task on GitHub.
$ raku/ch-2.raku
Example 1:
Input: @ints = (2, 1, 4, 5, 6, 3, 0, 2)
Output: 1
Operation 1:
min(2, 1) = 1
max(4, 5) = 5
min(6, 3) = 3
max(0, 2) = 2
Operation 2:
min(1, 5) = 1
max(3, 2) = 3
Operation 3:
min(1, 3) = 1
Example 2:
Input: @ints = (0, 5, 3, 2)
Output: 0
Operation 1:
min(0, 5) = 0
max(3, 2) = 3
Operation 2:
min(0, 3) = 0
Example 3:
Input: @ints = (9, 2, 1, 4, 5, 6, 0, 7, 3, 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 0, 8)
Output: 2
Operation 1:
min(9, 2) = 2
max(1, 4) = 4
min(5, 6) = 5
max(0, 7) = 7
min(3, 1) = 1
max(3, 5) = 5
min(7, 9) = 7
max(0, 8) = 8
Operation 2:
min(2, 4) = 2
max(5, 7) = 7
min(1, 5) = 1
max(7, 8) = 8
Operation 3:
min(2, 7) = 2
max(1, 8) = 8
Operation 4:
min(2, 8) = 2
Perl
The Perl looks just like the Raku because, frankly, I wrote the Raku like Perl. Note, however, I don’t have to avoid string interpolation turning into a function call on line 26.
use List::AllUtils qw( min max );
sub orderGame(@ints) {
my $loop = 0;
my @explain;
while (@ints > 1) {
my @new;
$loop++;
push @explain, "Operation $loop:";
push @explain, "";
my $flip = 1;
foreach my($a, $b) ( @ints ) {
my ($val, $func);
if ($flip == 1) {
$val = min($a, $b);
$func = 'min';
}
else { # $flip is -1
$val = max($a, $b);
$func = 'max';
}
push @new, $val;
push @explain, " $func($a, $b) = $val";
$flip *= -1; # switch from min to max and back
}
push @explain, "";
@ints = @new; # replace list with new list
}
return $ints[0], join("\n", @explain);
}
View the entire Perl script for this task on GitHub.
Python
First, I thought I’d use the pairwise function in the itertools module, but I found out that given the list 1, 2, 3, 4 it returned pairs (1, 2), (2, 3), (3, 4), which is not what I wanted. However, the documentation did say the function was roughly equivalent to
def pairwise(iterable):
# pairwise('ABCDEFG') → AB BC CD DE EF FG
iterator = iter(iterable)
a = next(iterator, None)
for b in iterator:
yield a, b
a = b
And I saw an easy way to modify that to produce the results I wanted. Rather than assigning the value of b to a for the next loop through the iterator, just assign a the next value of the iterator like we do before we enter the for loop, thus consuming the value and leaving the value after that for b…
def pairwise(iterable):
# pairwise('ABCDEFGH') → AB CD EF GH
iterator = iter(iterable)
a = next(iterator, None)
for b in iterator:
yield a, b
a = next(iterator, None)
def orderGame(ints):
loop = 0
explain = []
while (len(ints) > 1):
new = []
loop += 1
explain.append(f"Operation {loop}:")
explain.append("")
flip = 1
for a, b in pairwise(ints):
if (flip == 1):
val = min(a, b)
func = 'min'
else: # $flip is -1
val = max(a, b)
func = 'max'
new.append(val)
explain.append(f" {func}({a}, {b}) = {val}")
flip *= -1; # switch from min to max and back
explain.append("")
ints = new # replace list with new list
return ints[0], "\n".join(explain)
View the entire Python script for this task on GitHub.
Elixir
For the Elixir solution, I go back to using Enum.map_reduce/3 to loop over our list, but first I pass it through Enum.chunk_every/2 to chunk the list into pairs. In the accumulator for map_reduce, I’m keeping two pieces of information, the flip that I’m using to flip between the min and max functions, and the explain list I’m using to hold my list of operations. The function called by map_reduce has to return a tuple of the result of the operation (min/max) and the accumulator.
def orderGame(ints, explain, loop) when length(ints) == 1 do
{ List.first(ints), Enum.join(explain, "\n") }
end
def orderGame(ints, explain, loop) do
pairs = Enum.chunk_every(ints, 2)
explain = explain ++ [ "Operation #{loop}:", "" ]
acc = %{ flip: 1, explain: explain }
{ newints, acc } = Enum.map_reduce(pairs, acc, fn x, acc ->
a = List.first(x)
b = List.last(x)
{ val, func } = if acc[:flip] == 1 do # min
{ min(a, b), "min" }
else # max
{ max(a, b), "max" }
end
{
val,
acc
|> Map.put(:explain, acc[:explain] ++
[ " #{func}(#{a}, #{b}) = #{val}" ])
|> Map.put(:flip, acc[:flip] * -1)
}
end)
acc = acc |> Map.put(:explain, acc[:explain] ++ [ "" ])
orderGame(newints, acc[:explain], loop+1)
end
def orderGame(ints) do
orderGame(ints, [], 1)
end
View the entire Elixir script for this task on GitHub.
Here’s all my solutions in GItHub: https://github.com/packy/perlweeklychallenge-club/tree/master/challenge-286/packy-anderson
If you have any suggestion then please do share with us perlweeklychallenge@yahoo.com.