The Weekly Challenge

HEADLINES

Here we are in the Week #111. The number 111 is very special and has a story as well. I am a big fan of the game of cricket, you shouldn’t be surprised by the fact I come from India. In the game of cricket, the number 111 is sometimes called a Nelson after Admiral Nelson, who allegdly only had One Eye, One Arm, One Leg, near the end of his life. This is in fact inaccurate as Nelson never lost a leg. So it is a big deal reaching Nelson Number, thanks to the support and encouragement of Team PWC.

There is another reason that makes this week special as we are going to announce our next champion. With great pride, I announce Aaron Smith as the next champion of [Perl|Raku] Weekly Challenge.

Welcome back Andinus after the break, thanks for sharing the blog and solutions in Raku.

I noticed something unusual this week. Usually I see members sharing solutions in Perl or Raku or both, sometimes even in guest languages as well. Normally you would expect more regular contributions than guest but this week one of the respected Team PWC member, Cristina Heredia shared one Perl solution but two Python. Please don’t get me wrong, I am not complaining, just sharing never seen before incident. The best part of the weekly challenge is "There is no rule to play the game as we make our own rules as the game progress". Thank you for keeping the spirit of game going for so long.

I am pleasantly surprised to see my friend Ryan Thompson back in action. Thanks for your contributions. I hope and wish we get to read his blog soon.

I would also like to thank, Lakpa Tashi Bhutia, for sharing solutions to Week #13, Week #14 and Week #15.

Last but not the least, we reached the magic number for the second week in a row, thank you everyone.

Mohammad Anwar: Valid Phone Numbers

Mohammad Anwar: Transpose File

Let us share some interesting stats from the GitHub repository.

1. Commits: 16,347 (+198)

2. Pull Requests: 3,998 (+44)

3. Contributors: 163

4. Fork: 204

5. Stars: 92

Last but not least, I would like to thank each and every member for their support and encouragement.

Our solo sponsor Pete Sergeant has been a great support to keep us motivated. We are lucky that he agreed to continue the journey with us in the year 2021. I would like to personally thank Pete and his entire team for their generosity. It would be great if we could add few more to sponsor the prize money so that we could go back and declare weekly champions as we have done in the past. I hope and wish this will become possible in 2021. The amount doesn’t have to be huge. However, it would be nice to show off bunch of supporters. If an organisation comes forward and supports us then that would be the ultimate achievement.

RECAP

Quick recap of “The Weekly Challenge - 110” by Mohammad S Anwar.

PERL REVIEW

Please check out Perl solutions review of the “Perl Weekly Challenge - 108” by Colin Crain.

If you missed any past reviews then please check out the collection.

RAKU REVIEW

If you missed any past reviews then please check out the collection.

CHART

Please take a look at the charts showing interesting data.

I would like to THANK every member of the team for their valuable suggestions. Please do share your experience with us.

NEW MEMBERS

Please find out How to contribute?, if you have any doubts.

Please try the excellent tool EZPWC created by respected member Saif Ahmed of Team PWC.

GUESTS

Please checkout the guest contributions for the Week #110.

Please find past solutions by respected guests. Please share your creative solutions in other languages.

TASK #1 › Search Matrix

Submitted by: Mohammad S Anwar

You are given 5x5 matrix filled with integers such that each row is sorted from left to right and the first integer of each row is greater than the last integer of the previous row.

Write a script to find a given integer in the matrix using an efficient search algorithm.

Example

    Matrix: [  1,  2,  3,  5,  7 ]
            [  9, 11, 15, 19, 20 ]
            [ 23, 24, 25, 29, 31 ]
            [ 32, 33, 39, 40, 42 ]
            [ 45, 47, 48, 49, 50 ]

    Input: 35
    Output: 0 since it is missing in the matrix

    Input: 39
    Output: 1 as it exists in the matrix

TASK #2 › Ordered Letters

Submitted by: E. Choroba

Given a word, you can sort its letters alphabetically (case insensitive). For example, “beekeeper” becomes “beeeeekpr” and “dictionary” becomes “acdiinorty”.

Write a script to find the longest English words that don’t change when their letters are sorted.

Last date to submit the solution 23:59 (UK Time) Sunday 9th May 2021.