Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Question

This "sandbox" is a place where Code Golf users can get feedback on prospective challenges they wish to post to main. This is useful because writing a clear and fully specified challenge on your first try can be difficult, and there is a much better chance of your challenge being well received if you post it in the sandbox first.

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Answer 1

Split string of powers of 2

I had this idea while playing 2048; Every single power of 2 is unique, even if it contains another power of 2 as a substring because there are none that consist entirely of powers of 2.

For example, the string "2048409632864" can be split into 2048, 4096, 32, 8, 64 easily enough, but it can also be split into 2, 0, 4, 8, 4, 0963, 2, 8, 6, 4 with a simple left-to-right algorithm, which is incorrect.

So, the challenge is to correctly split these numbers in the shortest byte count possible. Is this a good idea?

Answer 2

A "counting" quine

code-golf and maybe quine. Hopefully codegolf.SE isn't tired of quines and quine-derivatives.

The aim of this golf is simple. Write a family of programs A and a single program B in your language, such that:

• Program A(N) produces the source code of A(N+1) when run, independent of file name, current date, contents of STDIN, or similar external variables.

• Program B, when given the source of A(N) as input, returns N. Input can be via STDIN, function argument, preinitialized single-character string variable, or language's equivalent.

Your score is the sum of the lengths of A(0) and B in bytes. Lowest score wins.

I called it a counting quine, because it is easiest to implement like a quine, except it also counts. The purpose of program B is to potentially allow for non-numeric changes between the programs in A, such as an increasing line of asterisks or something.

Things to consider

Is this too similar to "Program that creates larger versions of itself (quine-variant)?"

Golfscript has a particularly powerful answer to the above question, that could be adapted to this challenge. It seems like it would beat even my best J, which itself is a curt 29 + 10 = 39 bytes. If this question is dissimilar enough to post, are we just going to bite the pillow and let these two duke it out? Is there some kind of restriction that might make this a little harder or more unique?

Alternatively, should this be a popularity-contest? Maybe it would be more fun or interesting not to constrain cleverness by size requirements.

Answer 3

(this isn't quite a duplicate of Water-Bucket problem because that question was ill-posed and apparently abandoned; it's also not a duplicate of 3 and 5 Litre Jug Puzzle because that one was just a single instance, and an instance of a different problem to boot)

die-harder

THE PROBLEM

In commemoration of Leslie Lamport's Turing Award, let's borrow a problem from his TLA+ online hyperbook. There are two versions: "Die Hard" and "Die Harder." "Die Hard" is an instance of the general, "Die Harder" problem. "Die Hard" is the following:

Given an empty jug, jug[0], with capacity 3 gallons; and an empty jug, jug[1], with capacity 5 gallons, deliver exactly 4 gallons of water under the following rules; you may:

1. fill a jug completely, making its current amount equal to its capacity
2. spill a jug completely, making its current amount equal to zero
3. pour into a jug from another, either filling the destination, emptying the source, or both

One solution is to

1. fill jug 1 (amounts are 0, 5)
2. pour jug 1 into jug 0 (amounts are 3, 2)
3. spill jug 0 (amounts are 0, 2)
4. pour jug 1 into jug 0 (amounts are 2, 0)
5. fill jug 1 (amounts are 3, 4)
6. spill jug 0 (amounts are 0, 4)

I believe there are 3 more.

"Die Harder" is the following:

Given an ordered collection of n empty jugs with non-zero, not-necessarily unique capacities c[0], c[1], ..., c[n-1], deliver exactly k gallons of water, which may be spread out over multiple jugs, under the same rules as above.

THE CHALLENGE

Beat my reference Clojure code code for

A: performance, by choice of algorithm or by optimization or both (my algorithm becomes intolerably slow when the number of jugs > 3)

B: clarity (no obfuscators; we want to see your algorithm)

C: elegance

D: brevity

The above expresses the priority of the judging criteria: perf is more important that clarity, which is more important than elegance, which is more important than brevity.

Your code should behave as follows:

Given n, capacities in the form of a bracketed list like [3 5 7] and a target amount k, print t solutions in a form like the following in Clojure syntax, which is a solution for n = 2, capacities = [3 5], k = 4, and t = 2:

({:states
  [{:amount 0, :capacity 3, :id 0} {:amount 4, :capacity 5, :id 1}],
  :trace
  [(fill-jug 0)        (fill-jug 1)       (spill-jug 0)
   (pour-from 0 1)     (spill-jug 0)      (pour-from 0 1)
   (fill-jug 1)        (pour-from 0 1)    (spill-jug 0) ] }
 {:states
  [{:amount 3, :capacity 3, :id 0} {:amount 1, :capacity 5, :id 1}],
  :trace
  [(fill-jug 0)       (pour-from 1 0)     (fill-jug 0)
   (pour-from 1 0)    (spill-jug 1)       (pour-from 1 0)
   (fill-jug 0) ] } )

Each of your t solutions must present the final states of the jugs and a sequence of moves, in order, that achieve the solution. Minor variations to the above format are ok.

Extra credit if your code produces optimal (shortest number of moves, fewest pours, etc.) solutions and you can prove so. You may present proofs in commentary with your code; acceptance of a proof is at our sole discretion, as is judgment of clarity and elegance.

Include instructions for running your code if it's non-obvious (as in, "how exactly do I run this bit of INTERCAL?").

OBSERVATIONS

If the gcd of the capacities does not divide the target amount, the problem has no solution. In your golf, you might check this (my reference code assumes it, instead).

Certain moves, while legal, are trivial, namely:

1. filling a full jug
2. spilling an empty jug
3. pouring from an empty jug
4. pouring into a full jug
5. repeating the last move, whatever it was

In your golf, you may either check for these trivial moves or not.

You might unit-test your code on inputs like the following:

capacities = [3 5 7],    k = any integer from 0 through 15
capacities = [3 5 7 11], k = any integer from 0 through 26

A REFERENCE SOLUTION

You can find a reference solution in Clojure here. It includes unit tests that demonstrate the program at work.

License

Copyright © 2014 die-harder

Distributed under the Eclipse Public License either version 1.0 or (at your option) any later version.

Answer 4

I have not put substantial effort into this sandbox post. Since I am unsure(and it's probably not) whether this kind of question is a good fit for this site or not. If somebody reputable mentions that the idea has merit, I'll tune this sandbox up, and try to get it in shape for posting.

Obviously the biggest problem is how do you test the code? And that's the part I'm stuck on. If anyone can think of a way to overcome this please let me know! Anyway, here it is:

Write a program that posts itself as an answer

Your program must establish an http connection to codegolf.stackexchange.com, login, and post an answer to this question.

The answer must be in the form of:

"

[Language]

Code

"

Rules: Cannot read source file, or any resource which is identical to your source file in any way.

Tags: popularity contest, quine

Answer 5

Create an Andy Warhol portrait

Andy Warhol was one of the main figures of the Pop Art. One of his most famous works was a Marylin Monroe picture in nine frames changing the colors, saturation and others aspects of a original pic.

The challenge here is to create a program that takes any photo and emulates the Warhol painting with some caveats:

1. Final image should be compossed of 9 different frames.
2. Final image will be compossed from 3 rows and 3 columns.
3. Final image should be sized 3 times width and 3 times height of the original image.
4. The program should output just one image.
5. The image that the program outputs must be an emulation of Warhol works.
6. You cannot use any built in function that doest by itself the Warholization of the picture neither load or use any external image other than the original. You can use your language methods for changing color, hue, saturation..
7. Program should be deterministic: Any given photo should output the same image every time.

The program should read the image in JPG, BPM or PNG (at your convenience) and output the image in the same format.

The program will be tested with these images:

This is a popularity-contest so the most upvoted answers will win. Nobody restrains you from adding more warholized pictures for winning more votes from the judges.

Answer 6

Brute Force Decryption

The Task

Write an function B() in any language of your choice that takes an encrypted string as input and brute forces though solutions then infers the key used. Your program should then output the decrypted string and the key.

The encrypted string is one that is in English, is a valid sentence and has been encrypted by shifting the ASCII number by the key.

The Rules 

• This is code golf, smallest program wins.
• You can’t use any external dictionaries.

Encryption

To help you along I’ve written this program, which shows you how the string is encrypted:

def encrypt(string, key):
    encrypted = str()
    for Char in string:
        encrypted += (chr(ord(Char) + key))
    return encrypted

def decrypt(string, key):
    decrypted = str()
    for Char in string:
        decrypted += (chr(ord(Char) - key))
    return decrypted

Use Like:

>>> encrypt("secret", 5)
'xjhwjy'
>>> decrypt("xjhwjy", 5)
'secret'

Answer 7

I've put potential issues in bold.

We need some XHTML pages to test this on. I suggest http://www.w3.org/People/mimasa/test/schemas/xhtml1-sample.xml#headings.heading

XHTML Compression Challenge (revision 5)

Design an algorithm to compress XHTML code as efficiently as possible. You must provide programs that do compression and decompression, and a detailed explanation. Input before compression and decompressed output should be identical and both valid XHTML.

The exact specification of XHTML we will be using is XHTML 1.0 Transitional as defined by W3C. This is to make the code easier to deal with - parameter values are always in quotes, there is a distinction between single and container tags, and all tags are properly nested.

This would be a code-challenge, so the winner is whoever gets the best compression ratio on <some test code>. Obviously the algorithm should work on any HTML!

The sort of thing that I mean is

• not including the html tag in the compressed format (as you always know where it is)
• compressing h1, h2 and so on to 1, 2, etc.
• compress title to t

---

The test code (could be an actual webpage) (where do we get the test code) would contain a variety of HTML tags, in "natural abundances" (you won't suddenly have millions of kbd tags, say, but you would have lots of p or br).

---

The decompressed code and the original MUST be identical!

Or should we allow minute differences like interchanging <acronym> with <abbr>, or <strike> with <s>?

Answer 8

Preface

Kyle is in kindergarten. He can tie his shoes and count by twos and write in almost every programming language existent! But he can't seem to remember the days of the week. They always get mixed up in his mind.

So, his problem is that needs to know what day of the week it is tomorrow. He decides to write a program for himself.

But, his source code is stored in a very stingy cloud service. They charge $1.99 per character! So, he decided to code-golf it all...

---

Challenge

So, Kyle has hired you for a whopping 15 reputation! Your challenge is, given the name of a day of the week (thursday, for example), you output the name of the next day (friday). The code with the least characters wins.

• The input and output can be in any reasonable method you like (STDIN/STDOUT, command-line, read from a file, anything).

• You are free to use any built-in function you like. As long as they don't do all the work for you (that's no fun).

• The input and output should be in lowercase. Kyle hasn't learned about capital letters yet.

• In case you don't know, the weekdays are: monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday, friday, saturday, sunday. And they loop around. :-)

Good luck, and may the best code win!

Tags: code-golf

---

---

Commentary

I have seen a lot of weekday-related posts here on codegolf.SE, but I am pretty sure that this one will present a unique challenge.

I don't know if the "Preface" is too goofy. Please comment with your input and I will act accordingly with popular opinion.

Any input or suggestions or comments or upvotes are appreciated!

Answer 9

GCD Game for better algorithm

Given A,B print the number of pairs (a,b) such that GCD(a,b)=1 and 1<=a<=A and 1<=b<=B.

Input:

First line contains T, the number of testcases. Each testcase consists of two space separated integers denoting A and B.

Output:

The Number of pairs which have GCD=1

Constraints:

• 1 <= T <= 10
• 1 <= A <= 10⁵
• 1 <= B <= 10⁵

Sample Input

1
3 2

Sample Output

5

Explanation

There are five pairs of relatively prime numbers (where the first <= 3 and the second <= 2):

1,1
1,2
2,1
3,1
3,2

Time Limit 5 sec(s)

Memory Limit 256 MB

Source Limit 1024 KB

Use smart ways Bruteforce won't work.

Answer 10

Factorize any number using a set of predetermined random numbers

For instance:

With the randomly generated set [1,2,3,5,8], factorizing 10 would give the result [2,5] as in 2*5=10.

• If a number can not be factorized using the provided set, indicate so. Using the same set, factorizing 13 would show an error or an empty list.

• Generated sets should contain less than 64 numbers.

Bonuses

The score is given by floor (code length * (1 - 0,1 * # of bonuses))

• If a number can not be factorized, try to fix it using addition. In the previous example, factorizing 13 could give [2,5] and [3] as in 2*5+3=13.

• If a number can not be factorized, try to fix it using subtraction. In the previous example, factorizing 14 could give [3,5] and [1] as in 3*5-1=14.

• When generating a set, filter out primes and powers of 2.

code-golfalgorithmmath

Answer 11

Find the a Strong Prime

What's a String Prime? Wikipedia:

In cryptography, a prime number p is strong if the following conditions are satisfied.[1]

• p is sufficiently large to be useful in cryptography; typically this requires p to be too large for plausible computational resources to enable a cryptanalyst to factorise products of p multiplied by other strong primes.
• p-1 has large prime factors. That is, p = a_1 q_1 + 1 for some integer a_1 and large prime q_1.
• q_1-1 has large prime factors. That is, q_1 = a_2 q_2 + 1 for some integer a_2 and large prime q_2.
• p+1 has large prime factors. That is, p = a_3 q_3 - 1 for some integer a_3 and large prime q_3.

Input

Your program must receive a number of bits 16 <= x <= 60. This can be a method definition, command line argument, or stdin.

Output

Print and/or return a strong prime of exactly the given bit length.

Other rules:

• All variables in the below conditions refer to the wikipedia variables.
• Do not worry about condition 1 from wikipedia.
• For the rest of these rules, the notation |x| means the number of bits in x.
• |q_2| >= 0.4 |p|.
• You may not use any external tools. Other input data or precalculation counts against the length of your program even if it's in a different file or command line.
• You are allowed (and even encouraged) to use the algorithms in this paper (thanks @PeterTaylor!) but it is not a requirement.

code-golf primes

Answer 12

code-golf

Code Looking For 0x6C, 0x6F, 0x76, and 0x65 In All the Wrong Places

Write the shortest code that finds all instances of love" on the system. For this challenge love shall be defined as the bytes 0x6C, 0x6F, 0x76, and 0x65 in sequential order. It should look for love within files, in memory, and in file names. The code should run on Ubuntu to be tested. Assume you have whatever access you need to perform these operations.

Winning Criteria

The code will be run under a Ubuntu 12.04 instance that is hosted on a dual boot Windows 8.1 machine. There will be 1 file on each of the hard drives named love. The grub loader has a configuration called love. A program will be running in the background. If you find all the instances and have the shortest code. You will win. The contest will close XX/XX/YYYY.

Answer 13

Saving Eve

Background

In the year 1946 the organisation Illuminati launched their first intelligence collecting satellite - called Eve - into orbit around the earth. Onboard it contains a highly sophisticated set of sensors capable of eavesdropping on every telephone call in the world. All suspicious calls are recorded along with all ascertainable information about the caller and receiver. Eve then relays everything to Illuminati's office in Venice.

However, recently the growing amount of radio communication in space and on earth has started to interfere with Eve's downlink and uplink to and from the Venice office, which has resulted in spurious intermixing of the recordings of suspicious calls with the local weather report.

...we are to drop the bomb ... ...sunny and 28 degrees! In fair Verona... ...shoot them down...

Seeing as this interferes with Illuminati's ability to control all governments of the world, the error correction encoding firmware of Eve must be upgraded.

Objective

You have been hired to write the new firmware for Eve. You have realised that the only sufficiently robust and efficient encoding is to use the extended binary Golay code, which encodes 12-bits into 24-bits of data. Luckily Eve was built in the 40's, before the 8-bit byte convention, so all the data that Eve processes is already in 12-bit chunks.

So you have to write a function or a program that takes one 12-bit chunk (as an integer) and outputs or returns a 24-bit chunk (again as an integer) according to the extended binary Golay code.

And you have to write a decoding function or program that takes one 24-bit chunk (again as a an integer) and outputs the decoded 12-bits, with a 16th bit set (2^15) if any correctable errors were detected, and a 20th bit set (2^19) if any uncorrectable errors were detected.

But since the uplink to Eve is unstable you must write the functions or programs in the least amount of characters possible, so that it takes a minimal amount of time to upload.

Winning criteria

The least amount of characters in the source code of the encoding and decoding functions or programs.

Note

The exact details of the output of the encoding is not that important, as long as the solution can correct any error up to 3 bits and detect any error up to 7 bits.

Answer 14

Meta Code-golf code-golf

---

Golfing code can be slightly annoying^{[citation needed]}. There are some things that can be automatically be applied to every golfing problem (e. g. remove all newlines). So what do you do? Automate it!

Your task is to write a program that will golf another program. Naturally, your program must be also be golfed, otherwise this wouldn't be a code-golf question, would it?

The following rules apply to your program:

• All the code must be in one file, except for that of the program your program is golfing.
• You may assume that the code of the program to be golfed is contained in a string. That string will not be counted towards your score.
• The output of the golfed program must be identical to that of the original program.
• Your program need only golf programs in it's own language. For example, a Python code-golfer-bot-thing need only successfully golf Python code, it can break all the Java code it wants.

Sandbox note: I'm not sure how to score this. The length of the golfer should be factored in, as should the difference between an ungolfed and golfed program. I'm thinking something like (ungolfed - golfed) / chars in answer, but this would require a way of finding the average number of characters removed. This suggests something of a king-of-the-hill, with random programs being chosen and passed to the bots to be golfed, but I would probably have to limit that to Python because that's to only language for which I have a bunch of random programs lying around on my box. However, I have no idea how to implement this and I don't want to spend a while looking through 100+ programs looking for sensitive information (passwords, email addresses, names). Anyway, in this case, score would probably be (average ungolfed - golfed) / chars in answer. Any thoughts? Side note to the sandbox note: sorry for the convoluted state of the note. I was basically just vomiting all my thoughts onto the page as they came to me.

Answer 15

Reve's puzzle

From The Canterbury Puzzles:

When the pilgrims were stopping at a wayside tavern, a number of cheeses of varying sizes caught his alert eye; and calling for four stools, he told the company that he would show them a puzzle of his own that would keep them amused during their rest. He then placed n cheeses of graduating sizes on one of the end stools, the smallest cheese being at the top (and no cheese resting on a smaller one.) 'This is the riddle', quoth he, 'that I did once set before my fellow townsmen at Baldeswell, that is in Norfolk, and, by Saint Joce, there was no man among them that could rede it aright. And yet it is withal fully easy, for all that I do desire is that, by the moving of one cheese at a time from one stool unto another, ye shall remove all the cheeses to the stool at the other end without ever putting any cheese on one that is smaller than itself. To him that will perform this feat in the least moves that be possible will I give a draught of the best that our good host can provide.'

Write a function called reve that takes five arguments — the number of cheeses n >= 0 and labels for four stools (the source, two intermediaries, and the destination) — and outputs the minimum set of moves necessary to solve Reve's puzzle.

For example, the original puzzle is posed with n = 8, 10, and 21 cheeses, so running reve 8 "A" "B" "C" "D" should return the following 33 moves:

[("A","C"),("A","B"),("A","D"),("B","D"),("A","B"),("D","A"),("D","B"),("A","B"),("C","B"),("A","C"),("A","D"),("C","D"),("A","C"),("D","A"),("D","C"),("A","C"),("A","D"),("C","D"),("C","A"),("D","A"),("C","D"),("A","C"),("A","D"),("C","D"),("B","A"),("B","D"),("B","C"),("D","C"),("B","D"),("C","B"),("C","D"),("B","D"),("A","D")]

reve 10 "A" "B" "C" "D" (49 moves)

[("A","D"),("A","B"),("A","C"),("B","C"),("D","C"),("A","B"),("A","D"),("B","D"),("A","B"),("D","A"),("D","B"),("A","B"),("C","A"),("C","D"),("C","B"),("D","B"),("A","B"),("A","C"),("A","D"),("C","D"),("A","C"),("D","A"),("D","C"),("A","C"),("A","D"),("C","D"),("C","A"),("D","A"),("C","D"),("A","C"),("A","D"),("C","D"),("B","C"),("B","D"),("B","A"),("D","A"),("C","A"),("B","D"),("B","C"),("D","C"),("B","D"),("C","B"),("C","D"),("B","D"),("A","B"),("A","C"),("A","D"),("C","D"),("B","D")]

reve 21 "A" "B" "C" "D" (321 moves)

[("A","C"),("A","D"),("A","B"),("D","B"),("C","B"),("A","D"),("A","C"),("D","C"),("A","D"),("C","A"),("C","D"),("A","D"),("B","A"),("B","C"),("B","D"),("C","D"),("A","D"),("A","B"),("A","C"),("B","C"),("A","B"),("C","A"),("C","B"),("A","B"),("A","C"),("B","C"),("B","A"),("C","A"),("B","C"),("A","B"),("A","C"),("B","C"),("D","B"),("D","C"),("D","A"),("C","A"),("B","A"),("D","C"),("D","B"),("C","B"),("D","C"),("B","D"),("B","C"),("D","C"),("A","D"),("A","B"),("A","C"),("B","C"),("D","C"),("A","B"),("A","D"),("B","D"),("A","B"),("D","A"),("D","B"),("A","B"),("A","D"),("B","D"),("B","A"),("D","A"),("B","D"),("A","B"),("A","D"),("B","D"),("A","B"),("D","A"),("D","B"),("A","B"),("D","A"),("B","D"),("B","A"),("D","A"),("D","B"),("A","B"),("A","D"),("B","D"),("A","B"),("D","A"),("D","B"),("A","B"),("C","B"),("C","A"),("C","D"),("A","D"),("B","D"),("C","A"),("C","B"),("A","B"),("C","A"),("B","C"),("B","A"),("C","A"),("D","C"),("D","B"),("D","A"),("B","A"),("C","A"),("C","D"),("C","B"),("D","B"),("C","D"),("B","C"),("B","D"),("C","D"),("C","B"),("D","B"),("D","C"),("B","C"),("D","B"),("C","D"),("C","B"),("D","B"),("A","D"),("A","B"),("A","C"),("B","C"),("D","C"),("A","B"),("A","D"),("B","D"),("A","B"),("D","A"),("D","B"),("A","B"),("C","A"),("C","D"),("C","B"),("D","B"),("A","B"),("A","C"),("A","D"),("C","D"),("A","C"),("D","A"),("D","C"),("A","C"),("A","D"),("C","D"),("C","A"),("D","A"),("C","D"),("A","C"),("A","D"),("C","D"),("A","C"),("D","A"),("D","C"),("A","C"),("D","A"),("C","D"),("C","A"),("D","A"),("D","C"),("A","C"),("A","D"),("C","D"),("A","C"),("D","A"),("D","C"),("A","C"),("A","D"),("C","D"),("C","A"),("D","A"),("C","D"),("A","C"),("A","D"),("C","D"),("C","A"),("D","A"),("D","C"),("A","C"),("D","A"),("C","D"),("C","A"),("D","A"),("C","D"),("A","C"),("A","D"),("C","D"),("A","C"),("D","A"),("D","C"),("A","C"),("A","D"),("C","D"),("C","A"),("D","A"),("C","D"),("A","C"),("A","D"),("C","D"),("B","A"),("B","C"),("B","D"),("C","D"),("A","D"),("B","C"),("B","A"),("C","A"),("B","C"),("A","B"),("A","C"),("B","C"),("D","B"),("D","A"),("D","C"),("A","C"),("B","C"),("B","D"),("B","A"),("D","A"),("B","D"),("A","B"),("A","D"),("B","D"),("B","A"),("D","A"),("D","B"),("A","B"),("D","A"),("B","D"),("B","A"),("D","A"),("C","D"),("C","A"),("C","B"),("A","B"),("D","B"),("C","A"),("C","D"),("A","D"),("C","A"),("D","C"),("D","A"),("C","A"),("B","C"),("B","D"),("B","A"),("D","A"),("C","A"),("B","D"),("B","C"),("D","C"),("B","D"),("C","B"),("C","D"),("B","D"),("B","C"),("D","C"),("D","B"),("C","B"),("D","C"),("B","D"),("B","C"),("D","C"),("B","D"),("C","B"),("C","D"),("B","D"),("C","B"),("D","C"),("D","B"),("C","B"),("C","D"),("B","D"),("B","C"),("D","C"),("B","D"),("C","B"),("C","D"),("B","D"),("A","D"),("A","B"),("A","C"),("B","C"),("D","C"),("A","B"),("A","D"),("B","D"),("A","B"),("D","A"),("D","B"),("A","B"),("C","A"),("C","D"),("C","B"),("D","B"),("A","B"),("A","C"),("A","D"),("C","D"),("A","C"),("D","A"),("D","C"),("A","C"),("A","D"),("C","D"),("C","A"),("D","A"),("C","D"),("A","C"),("A","D"),("C","D"),("B","C"),("B","D"),("B","A"),("D","A"),("C","A"),("B","D"),("B","C"),("D","C"),("B","D"),("C","B"),("C","D"),("B","D"),("A","B"),("A","C"),("A","D"),("C","D"),("B","D")]

An up vote for all successful attempts. Shortest solution by character count wins. Sorry, no beer. Although if you're ever in the Boston area, it's on me.

Questions

• Is this a suitable question for code golf?
• Is it clear what I'm asking? Do I need to be more specific about input/output, etc.?
• Any other suggestions?

Answer 16

Type me out.

Your task (related to this question) is to translate any text (in a file, or simply input) into the input of a telephone keypad.

and provide a keypress score.

As the keypad has a limited set of keys you have to 'encode' your non-alphanumerics with their ASCii hexadecimal encoding; e.g. to type ~ (which is hexidecimal ASCII land is 7e) you press the hash key once, the 7 key (once to get a seven) and then 3 three times to cycle through the digits 3, 'd', and finally 'e'. This gives the code #7e which corresponds to ~ (for a total number of key presses of 5). Spaces and capitals have to be accessed via hex code (so MY_CONST (#4d #59 #53def #43 #4f #4e #53 #54 - 27 presses) costs you less than my_const (6m 9wxy #53def 2bc 6mno 6mn 7pqrs 8t - 29), but more than myconst (6m 9wxy 2bc 6mno 6mn 7pqrs 8t - 23)).

For instance If your code had print() that would cost 15 for the print (7p 7pqr 4ghi 6mn 8t) plus 6 for the () (#28 #29)

To be clear with just the input print() the output is:

7p 7pqr 4ghi 6mn 8t #28 #29
21

(Note however the hex codes for c f i r s v y z are shorter (correspondingly #63 #66 #69 #72 #73 #76 #79 #7a) than long hand key presses. It's perfectly allowed to score print() as 19:

7p #72 #69 6mn 8t #28 #29
19

)

This is Code Golf, so feed your code into the finished program - shortest answer (in keypresses) wins.

Answer 17

I'm posting here first so I don't clutter up the site in case people are tired of pi questions. Thoughts?

Yet Another Pi Question

code-golf

Today (actually tomorrow as I post this) is Pi Approximation Day (22/7), so here is a variant of the "compute pi" golf that I don't think has been seen before.

Write a program that accepts a number, either on standard input or as a command line argument, and prints that many digits of pi to standard output.

Details, for the nitpicky:

• You may write the program to accept its input as the ASCII characters representing the number of digits, in either decimal or hexadecimal (preceded by 0x), or as a sequence of bytes representing that value. For example, if I want to tell your program to compute 65535 digits of pi, I would invoke it in your choice of one of the following six ways (using bash syntax):

  program 65535
  program 0xffff
  program $'\xff\xff'
  echo 65535 | program
  echo 0xffff | program
  echo $'\xff\xff' | program
  

• The program must produce no output on standard output other than the required decimal digits of pi, and the decimal point. There are no constraints on what it may write to standard error or to any files.

• The leading 3 may count toward your number of digits, or not; your call. (It has to be printed either way.)
• Standard loopholes apply, including using a builtin constant to supply the value of pi. (I'm looking at you Mathematica)
• You may assume that the value passed in will be small enough not to exceed resource limits in your program (recursion depth, memory allotment, integer overflow, etc.). Your program should be written in such a way that increasing these resource limits will allow it to compute more digits.

Answer 18

Note: This challenge might not work out on this site, please down vote this answer if you feel like it won't work and up vote if you think it could. If you down vote, a comment would be appreciated. I don't see the point in limiting the freedom of the participants since I think it will make things less fun/interesting.

Your love you want to show 'em, generate them a poem.

Poetry is not easy;
Rhyming is too hard.
Generate me a poem that's not too cheesy.
If it's good enough we'll call it art.

In all honesty, poetry really is tough beans. So for this challenge I ask you to write some code in the language of your choice that will generate poetry.

Restrictions

Your program has to be able to output a large amount of generated poetry of reasonable quality. This means that you can't write code that tries to 'generate' a poem that already exists. You also can't sample parts of existing poetry (this includes poetry invented by you). It is okay if some (or even most) of your code's poems make no sense and there are only a small percentage of good poems. I'm sure that code that consistently generates good poetry will be more popular though. Other than that there are no restrictions, you can use dictionaries, you can use the internet, you can strive for a certain rhyming scheme or several. It's poetry, get creative.

Your answer

Your answer should include:

• Your full code or a link to it.
• An explanation of your strategy.
• Some of your favorite poems generated by your code.

The winner

This is a popularity-contest, so the answer with the most votes wins.

But what's a poem?

I see where you're going with this. You could output a list of words and claim it's poetry. I fear the other users won't be too impressed with that though and you won't get many votes (if you can avoid down votes). However, that doesn't mean it absolutely has to rhyme, there are plenty of ways of making poetry interesting and if you can have your code generate non-rhyming poetry that other people like, you deserve those votes. Explaining your strategy will also help people see why what you did is interesting.

Answer 19

Program calculating its own length code-golf

Task

Your task is simple: write a program that produces its own length, without using any literals or built-in constants other than 0 (or its equivalents in your language).

Rules

1. Your code must print its own length in bytes when run, followed by a single newline.
2. Your code cannot use any literals other than 0 (or whatever equivalents your language might have). This includes string and character literals.
3. Your code cannot use any built-in constants of your language, unless these are guaranteed to always have the value 0.
4. Any functions and operators provided by your language can be used.
5. You're not allowed to use any external libraries or external resources in your program.

Scoring

The score of a valid program is its length in bytes. The score of an invalid program is ∞.
As this is code golf, lowest score wins.

Answer 20

Find a multiple of 42 that is spelled with all of the characters that make up the word "forty-two".

Rules:

1. All of the characters in "forty-two" must be included at least once. Dashes count as characters, and each character must be used cumulatively (dog doesn't contain all of the characters that make up the word dogg, for example).
2. The result can be any multiple of 42 that meets the defined criteria, presented in numerical form.
3. Result must be multiple of greater than 1 (or less than -1). In other words, 42 and -42 are not allowed.
4. Additional characters not in the word "forty-two" are O.K.

5. The program must calculate its result without utilizing prior knowledge of a multiple known to include the right letters. Clarification:

   • This means that self trivial solutions such as hard-coding the program to print 42,000 are not allowed.
   • As an exception to this rule, prior knowledge of the maximum result possibility (42,000, for example) may be used to define the program's ability to name numbers up to the necessary size.

The shortest code (counting in bytes) to do so in any language wins.

Answer 21

Dining Philosophers (Incomplete)

Please do not vote or comment yet.

---

Introduction

Cooperate with other Philosophers in order to eat your dinner as quickly as possible.

Game

You will be randomly paired with two other philosophers. Each philosopher begins with one fork. A philosopher needs two forks to eat his dinner. Each round you may take one of six actions:

• Take the fork on your left
• Take the fork on your right
• Place a fork to your left
• Place a fork to your right
• Eat
• Wait

The following behaviors will cause you to wait by default.

• Attempting to take a fork that is not there
• Attempting to place a fork you do not have
• Attempting to eat with less than two forks
• Attempting to take a fork when you are already holding two

Once every philosopher has successfully eaten, the trial is completed. Each participant is scored according to how long it took all three participants to eat.

Input

Input description here.

For Java submissions, input will be passed via parameter. For non-Java submissions, input will be provided via a command argument.

Output

Output description here.

Deliverables

Java Submissions

You must submit a unique title and a Java class that extends the abstract Philosopher class written below.

public abstract class Human {
    public abstract String takeAction(String arg);
}

Non-Java Submissions

You must submit a unique title, a program, and a Windows command line string that will run your program. Remember that an argument may be appended to that string. For example:

• python Aristotle.py
  • Note that this one has no args. This is round one! Be prepared for this.
• python Aristotle.py args

Scoring

Your final score will be the median of your scores across ____ trials.

---

king-of-the-hill

Answer 22

Tennis Tournament (Incomplete)

Please do not vote or comment yet.

---

Introduction

Insert tennis themed introduction here.

Game

Insert description of the tournament hierarchy, player seeding, and program flow.

Input

You will be passed the current set of matches. Matches will be comma (,) delimited. Players within a match will be dash (-) delimited. Players will be represented by ID and strength in the format <ID>$<Strength>. Byes will be represented by 0$0.

Java submissions will be supplied input via argument to the takeAction() function. Non-Java submissions will be supplied input via command line argument.

Example

The following input represents a three player tournament. The players' IDs are 2, 1, and 3. Their strengths are 1, 2, and 2, respectively. Player 3 has a bye.

2$1-1$2,0$0-3$2

Output

Return the string "play" if you want to play. Return the string "concede" if you want to concede.

Deliverables

Java Submissions

You must submit a unique title and a Java class that extends the abstract Athlete class written below.

public abstract class Athlete {
    public abstract String takeAction(String arg);
}

Non-Java Submissions

You must submit a unique title, a program, and a Windows command line string that will run your program. Remember that an argument will be appended to that string. For example:

• python RafaelNadal.py args

Scoring

Your final score will be the median of your scores across ____ trials.

---

king-of-the-hill

Answer 23

Teach me to play clarinet

code-golf (might be an optimization problem for code-challenge)

This is mostly a work in progress until I figure out the best input and output notation/formatting.

---

The clarinet is a very complicated instrument, as there are more keys than I have fingers. Additionally, there may be multiple ways to play the same note. I dream of becoming a professional clarinetist one day, but I am very lazy at everything I do. When playing music, I try to move my fingers as little as possible.*

The input will be a series of musical notes, which each note consisting of a note name (like E or G#) and a number which represents which octave of the clarinet is being discussed.

Examples:

E1 - low E, the bottom note
C1 - C below the staff
E2 - E at the bottom of the staff
F#3 - F# at the top line of the staff
G4 - G that is 4 ledger lines above the staff, the highest note needed

An example input might be

Eb2 D2 F#3 F3 F#3 G3 F#3

From this list of notes, your program should determine which fingerings I should use to play these notes in the easiest way possible. "Easiest" means that the total number of finger movements should be minimized (how to explain?).

The output should describe my finger position for each note in terms of the location of each of my fingers.

---

One problem I see is that there is no standardized fingering chart for clarinet. Furthermore, no fingering charts actually specify which fingers are used to play which keys. One thing I would have to do is create a list of all possible positions for each finger. Then, a single fingering "diagram" would consist of the list of keys, telling which are open/closed/either. There would be multiple fingering diagrams for each note.

The next problem is that the number of distinct fingerings can grow to be quite large when certain tricks are taken into account such as "leaving the right hand down while playing throat tones." This would be the reason for adding the "either" option to the fingering charts.

I must figure out how to notate the fingering charts and format the output.

---

*this is actually a good thing and not lazy

Answer 24

Chess: End Game KOTH

Task

You design a bot that plays the final moves of a chess game against other bots. The chess board will be in the end game stage (relatively few pieces) with either a winning position for white, or a force draw. Points will be scored on the outcome of the game in each board situation. Bots will play both the black and white sides for each position (10 unique positions, 20 games in total).

Rules

1. Basic chess rules apply

   • No en passant will be possible
   • Promotion of pawns is valid
   • Previous castling moves will be indicated during board setup, otherwise castling is possible if legal
   • 50 move rule will apply
   • Threefold repetition rule will apply

2. No outside help whatsoever (chess engines, endgame tablebases, stored patterns)

3. Notation will be in the ICCF numeric notation format
4. Round-robin tournament setup (see scoring below)

5. 20 games per match (1 match is one bot-to-bot pairing)

   • Each bot plays 10 games as white and 10 games as black
   • 8 of these games will be force wins for white, the remaining 2 are force draws (but winnable by either player)
   • The same 10 games will be repeated, so each bot will play the same position as both colors.

6. Time limit of 1 minute per match? (very flexibly here)

   • Maximum time per move is X seconds (possible Fischer Delay bonus?)
   • Failure to move in the time limit per move will result in a loss for the current game

Scoring

These values will surely change

+---------------------+------------+------------+-------------+-------------+
| Board Situation     | White Wins | Black Wins | Black Draws | White Draws |
+---------------------+------------+------------+-------------+-------------+
| Force Win for White | 100        | 500        | 250         | -50         |
| Force Draw          | 250        | 350        | 50          | 50          |
+---------------------+------------+------------+-------------+-------------+

1. Need to figure in number of moves into points
2. Overall winner is the bot with the most points at the end of the round-robin

How To Play

1. Controller will be written in python and will communicate to bots via STDIN/STDOUT

   • Bots can be programmed in any language that support persistent polling of STDIN and STDOUT

2. A board will be generated by the controller and sent to both players at the same time (will include information for castling in a TBD format). Each bot will be given ~50 ms to process the board information, but they don't know what side they are playing.

3. Following the short pause, each of the bots will be sent either B or W character to indicate which side they will play for the next game. At this time, the white bot timer is activated and it can return his move any time afterwards.

4. The bot will response via its STDOUT the move in ICCF numeric notation

5453

1. After the move has been validated by the controller, the time remaining for both opponents and the move history will be sent to the each bot, and then the other bot begins their turn. Time will be outputted in ms in the following format WXXXXX BXXXXX. The following is the output given to each bot after each ply.

W54000 B60000 1) 5453
W54000 B48000 1) 5453 7872
W52000 B48000 1) 5453 7872 2) 6512

1. This will repeat (steps 4&5) until the game is won, drawn, or time runs out, after which the bots will be sent the final score of the game and time remaining for the next game of the match

W35000 B47000 W+300 B+50

Things that might be a problem

1. The efficiency of the language (i.e., C++ vs perl) might bias towards language used instead of algorithm developed
2. Generating board situations (could grab them through an online DB automatically)
3. Too hard/easy to program?

Answer 25

Tetromino Game king-of-the-hill

(name suggestions?)

This game is based off of L game, an abstract puzzle game by Edward de Bono.

Rules

Every player is assigned a random position in the list of players. Every round, each player gets a turn, in the order defined by the list of players. The game is over once only 1 player remains.

The board is a 2-dimensional grid containing the tetrominoes, as well as 1x1 neutral pieces. It does not wrap. It is generated randomly and all of the pieces are placed on it, with a good amount of neutral pieces (should equal roughly half the amount of empty blocks, and just over 2/3 the total amount of players).

On each turn, the player must move their piece to another position on the board, and optionally a single neutral piece. This can be anywhere, however, no pieces can intersect.

The player loses if they cannot move their tetromino anywhere; they are no longer given any turns, but their tetromino stays.

After 20 rounds, on every round, a neutral piece will be placed randomly on the board.

A player's score is equal to the amount of turns that they have played.

Submissions

Communication with the controller is done through STDIN and STDOUT. Your submission will run for the entire length of the game. If your program is expected to produce output and doesn't within 4 seconds, you will lose.

At the start of the game, your submission will be launched and you are expected to produce a tetromino to play with. You should output a number from 0 to 4, corresponding to these tetrominoes:

(modified version of this)

They are in order of strategical complexity; 4 is the most complex.

Then, the initial game data will be passed to your game.

The first line contains 3 space-separated integers: your position in the list (starting with 0), board width, and board height.

The rest is a rendering of the board: A player's tetromino is made of the last digit of the base-93 number (ascii 33 to 125) of their position in the list. A space is an empty space, and ~ is a neutral piece.

On every turn except your own, your bot will receive information about the turn. The first line can be one of either M 0 0 0 or L; the first is for motion (see next paragraph), and L is for that player being unable to make any moves and losing.

The motion line is in the format M x y r f, where x and y is the new position of the upper-left block in the bounding box of that player's tetromino, and r is the amount of rotation (0 for 0 degrees, 1 for 90, 2 for 180, 3 for 270, clockwise).

f is either 0 or 1; 1 if the player flipped their piece along the x axis (this happens before rotation). Optionally x y x y could also be on the end of the line, the first pair of coords being that of a neutral piece, and the next being its target location. It is followed by the new board.

On your turn, GO will be given to you on STDIN and you will be expected to produce a string x y r f and optionally x y x y, similar to the one in the paragraphs just above this. The controller will evaluate whether or not there are possible moves for you just before your turn, and will eliminate you automatically if necessary.

If your output is invalid, you will receive ERROR on STDIN and you will be expected to produce a new output. If this happens 5 times in a row, you lose.

Submissions are allowed to store data in files, and initial data for the file can be included with the submission.

Scoring

Each player's score is equal to the amount of turns they play; however the submission's final score is the sum of all their scores in multiple trials. Trials will be run until the leading submission is 5 points away from the runner-up.

Name?

Ideas: "Tetromeano" (suggested as a joke on chat), "Space Tetris".

Discuss the game here.

Answer 26

This is a rough idea for a king-of-the-hill challenge, if possible I would like someone else to help me with it and possibly host the challenge (and consequently getting all of the up votes :] ).

Pecking Birds - input wanted

You're a bird and birds need to eat. There's not all that much food, so you might need to fight for it.

Haven't you heard about the bird?

Birds live on a continuous torus where food drops at random places at an increasingly slow rate. They can only see food from a certain distance, they can see all other birds on the torus though. Birds can only move over a limited distance at a time and can peck at either birds, food or nothing within a certain radius. Birds can see a bird's last action, but they can't distinguish between pecks at food and pecks at nothing if they're too far away. Birds that are pecked to death, turn into food. Food disappears after a fixed amount of birds have taken a peck at it. Birds' health goes down every turn, but get refilled a bit if they peck at food.

Input and Output

If I end up hosting this challenge myself, the controller will be in Java and submissions will be either a java class or a program in another language. Both types of answers will be allowed to persist between turns. Java submissions will have the state of the game copied into global variables and be called to act through a method and send their output as a return value. There will also likely be helper functions available for java submissions. Other submissions will get their info through STDIN and asked to send their output to STDOUT. There will be two actions every turn, a pecking action and a moving action. before being asked what to do, you will get the position of each bird, their last pecking action and the position and plentitude of all food withing your sight. On your pecking turn you will be asked to either peck at food, peck at a bird, peck at nothing or not peck at all. On the movement turn you will asked to return a position within your movement radius to move to. All birds peck at the same time and then move at the same time alternately. the winner is the last bird standing.

The competition

Each player will start with 10(?) birds on a sqrt(n)*50(?) sized torus, where n is the amount of entries. Your score will be determined by the amount of rounds your last bird died before the last bird standing. Obviously a lower score is better. The simulation will be run several times and some sort of average will be taken to determine the overall winner.

Answer 27

Jenga code

I think everyone knows what Jenga is.

As per Wikipedia:

Jenga is a game of physical and mental skill [...] During the game, players take turns removing one block at a time from a tower constructed of 54 blocks. Each block removed is then balanced on top of the tower, creating a progressively taller but less stable structure.

Challenge

Write a program that behaves as a Jenga tower. Every time a randomly chosen piece of code is removed and placed at the bottom of your program, the code should re-run. Goal is to achieve the tallest running code tower.

Rules

• The starting tower (or source code) must be of exactly 15 lines of code. Such lines must be divisible by 3 forming a 15x3n grid composed by 15 lines of 1xn bricks.
• A brick is removed randomly from the code and placed at the bottom from left to right until the 3n block line is complete. The process goes on at the bottom of the new formed line.
• If a brick has strictly more consecutive whitespaces than any consecutive characters in it its considered broken and fails to sustain the tower.
• A brick must always be present for each row (2 holes and 1 brick), but its position in the row is not important.
• A tower is tall 20 lines if the 20th line tower runs with no errors.
• A brick cannot start nor end with comment start or end tags of your chosen language (e.g /* or //)

Output

Each tower must output its own height.

Scoring system

Your score is simply the avarage tower height for your program:

SCORE = (MAX TOWER + MIN TOWER) / 2

Where MIN TOWER refers to the minimun non-running tower while MAX TOWER refers to the maximum running tower.

(It would be nice if in the answer both towers are shown)

Proposed tag: code-challenge

Answer 28

Analyze Tonguetwisters code-golf natural-language string

Your task is to write a program which will accept an English tonguetwister, search for commonly used sounds and decide why it is difficult to pronounce.

1. Calculate the frequency of every sound used in the input sentence.
2. Count identical sounds (for example, ea and ee) as the same thing.
3. Ignore those sound groups (see below) which occur less than 0.1 times per character of the input.
4. From the sounds that remain, group members of the same group together and separate by a forward slash (/).
5. Arrange the groups by decreasing number of occurences.
6. Separate groups by commas.
7. Output.

Identical Sounds [under construction]

ee = ea (in step 2, replace ea by ee)

Sound Groups [under construction]

e,ee
s,sh,c,ch
f,th,ph

Examples

Input: She sells sea-shells on the sea-shore.

Output: s/sh,e/ee

Input: The seething sea ceaseth and thus the seething sea sufficeth us.

Output: s/c,e/ee

Rules

• Receive input on STDIN, as command-line arguments or otherwise. You may not expect it to be stored in a variable.
• Output to STDOUT or equivalent.
• Standard loopholes are banned.

Answer 29

Gun Fight at High Noon

Gameplay

This will be a 5 or 4 stage (the decision will be explained later) king-of-the-hill tournament where programs are pitched against each other to solve an integration problem faster than the other. The fastest will then go on to the next round.

Number of rounds: Due to tournament bracketing, the number of rounds will be decided by the reception of the challenge. For four rounds, sixteen entrants are needed. For five rounds, thirty two entrants are needed.

The controller

The controller will be written in Python, using time.time() as the timer. When run, it will time one entrant, print the output and time the other entrant and print the output. I will then put the results into a text file and post the results on the question.

The problem

The problem will be a simple elementary function integration problem with long numbers included. These will be generated randomly when the controller is initiated and both entrants will be given the same problem.

Rules

1. No inbuilt functions can be used to solve the problems
2. If you fail to calculate the problem correctly, you will lose immediately
3. In event of a tie, the match will be replayed with a different problem

Inbuilt Functions

Inbuilt functions include functions that solve integration problems themselves you must have a hand written integral solving algorithm in your code.

Example and Arguments

All information will be transferred via stdout and stdin. The integral will be in the following format:

Integral http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/0/3/4/034cf496a9d3026984fcae6cfa58608a.png

And f(x) being like where a and n will be replaced for integers when passed to your program:

With arguments being passed like so:

programname a b f(x)

The reply will be stdout as a floating point integer to a precision of 5 decimal points. An example from one of my tests:

~$ python3 showdowncontroller.py Test1 'python3 int1.py' Test2 'python3 int2.py'
A,B:        3,36
Function:   10*x**3
Result:     4199187.88575

Test1: 0.04052305221557617 True 4199187.88575 <- name time correct? output

Test2: 0.04041910171508789 True 4199187.88575


Win: Test2

The command run for each program was:

python3 [program name].py 3 36 10*x**36

And the response was:

4199187.88575

Other

In your answer you will need the following:

• Name of your program
• Command to compile your program (if necessary)
• Command to run your program
• Your code
• A short description of your integration method

Your program can be in any language as long as I can compile and run it on Ubuntu 12.04 Precise.

There will be a 0.00005 error tolerance: any more or any less and your program will lose the match. The controller uses Simpson's Rule.

# Generate numbers
a=random.randint(1, 50)
n=random.randint(1, 10)
b=random.randint(1, 50)
c=random.randint(1, 50)

# Integration using the Simpson method
def integrate(f, a, b):
   h = (b-a)/100
   meth = lambda f,x,h: (f(x) + f(x+h))/2.0
   ival = Decimal(h * sum(meth(f, a+i*h, h) for i in range(100)))
   return ival 

# Call function
func = lambda x: eval(str(a)+'*x**'+str(n))
result = round(integrate(func, c, b), 5)

Test programs will be posted with their running times so people can tell how fast my computer is. I will post no hardware specifications (processor type, speed) though - that will remain a mystery.

Controller code

# Gun Fight at High Noon
import subprocess, random, time, sys
from decimal import Decimal

# Get program names
prog1 = sys.argv[1]
prog1command = sys.argv[2]
prog2 = sys.argv[3]
prog2command = sys.argv[4]

# Generate numbers
a=random.randint(1, 50)
n=random.randint(1, 10)
b=random.randint(1, 50)
c=random.randint(1, 50)

# Integration using the Simpson method
def integrate(f, a, b):
   h = (b-a)/100
   meth = lambda f,x,h: (f(x) + f(x+h))/2.0
   ival = Decimal(h * sum(meth(f, a+i*h, h) for i in range(100)))
   return ival 

# Call function
func = lambda x: eval(str(a)+'*x**'+str(n))
result = round(integrate(func, c, b), 5)
function=str(a)+'*x**'+str(n)

print('A,B:     '+str(c)+','+str(b))
print('Function:    '+function)
print('Result:      '+str(result))

# Run program and evaluate output
def runprog(command, result, f, a, b):
    start = time.time()
    answer = subprocess.Popen(command+' '+str(a)+' '+str(b)+' '+f, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, shell=True).communicate()[0].decode('utf-8')
    end = time.time()
    elapsed = end-start

    if Decimal(answer) > result-Decimal(0.00005) and Decimal(answer) < result+Decimal(0.00005):
        correct = True
    else:
        correct = False

    return elapsed, correct, answer

p1time, p1correct, p1answer = runprog(prog1command, result, function, c, b)
p2time, p2correct, p2answer = runprog(prog2command, result, function, c, b)

print('\n'+prog1+': '+str(p1time)+' '+str(p1correct)+' '+p1answer)
print(prog2+': '+str(p2time)+' '+str(p2correct)+' '+p2answer)

if p1correct:
    if p2correct:
        if p1time < p2time:
            print('\nWin: '+prog1)
        elif p1time == p2time:
            print('\nTie')
        else:
            print('\nWin: '+prog2)
    else:
        print('\nWin: '+prog1)
else:
    if p2correct:
        print('\nWin: '+prog2)
    else:
        print('\nTie')

Answer 30

Rubik's Cube Simulator

I had posted a rubik's cube question a few days back which turned out to be quite close to an existing one although I made a few amendments. This is a different question altogether.

The idea is to simulate operation of a rubik's cube.

INPUT: Take a preset sticker configuration for each face as input

Your program must interpret the configuration and suggest a list of moves to generate the said configuration from a perfect Rubik's cube.

Your program must also check if the sticker combination is an invalid one, and print an error message saying that it is not possible to generate such a configuration.

Question should probably be used as a popularity contest given the length and complexity of code, but based on response, a code golf follow-up is on the cards.

Suggestions are most welcome.