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.

Sandbox FAQ

Posting

To post to the sandbox, scroll to the bottom of this page and click "Answer This Question". Click "OK" when it asks if you really want to add another answer.

Write your challenge just as you would when actually posting it, though you can optionally add a title at the top. You may also add some notes about specific things you would like to clarify before posting it. Other users will help you improve your challenge by rating and discussing it.

When you think your challenge is ready for the public, go ahead and post it, and replace the post here with a link to the challenge and delete the sandbox post.

Discussion

The purpose of the sandbox is to give and receive feedback on posts. If you want to, feel free to give feedback to any posts you see here. Important things to comment about can include:

• Parts of the challenge you found unclear
• Comments addressing specific points mentioned in the proposal
• Problems that could make the challenge uninteresting or unfit for the site

You don't need any qualifications to review sandbox posts. The target audience of most of these challenges is code golfers like you, so anything you find unclear will probably be unclear to others.

If you think one of your posts requires more feedback, but it's been ignored, you can ask for feedback in The Nineteenth Byte. It's not only allowed, but highly recommended! Be patient and try not to nag people though, you might have to ask multiple times.

It is recommended to leave your posts in the sandbox for at least several days, and until it receives upvotes and any feedback has been addressed.

Other

Search the sandbox / Browse your pending proposals

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Answer 1

I posted this earlier but they suggested I put it in the sandbox which made a lot of sense.

Reading sheet music

Your job is to take an image of sheet music and make it usefull for someone that doesn't read notes.

Output

3/4 (Which is the beat)
C F B,A,D E F C (Notes, Space seperated and comma seperated if notes are tied)
Images of the notes to play.

Layout images: The images must show a piano with the layout of an 61 key piano.

Each image will display a set of 5 consecutive notes. Tied notes will be treated as 1 note.
If the first note of a set is C there will be a '1' on the C key,
Second note F there will be a '2' on the F key and so on.
Like i said tied notes will be treated as 1 note but the index will count up.
So B,A,D will result in:
'1' on B; '2' on A; '3' on D.

If the same note is used twice in 1 set the note will show both indexes. How you display that is up to you, you can either seperate them by comma or newline.

Some information on reading notes can be found here:
http://www.wikihow.com/Read-Music
http://readsheetmusic.info/readingmusic.shtml

Submitted answers must have:

• The code (Golfed and ungolfed).
• Image used (or link to image).
• The output (both text and images).

Not sure about the tag. I tagged it code-golf for now but if someone has a better idea let me know.
(should I also use the kolmogorov-complexity tag?)

Right now this is code-golf so the one with the lowest bytes wins.

Happy coding :)

Answer 2

5 Miscellaneous Flag Challenges code-golf graphical-output geometry

We've had questions on the South Korean flag and the flag of Nepal. I thought that some other flag questions could be interesting.

I've grouped these into one post to avoid cluttering the sandbox with potentially bad posts. Once we've decided which of these are worth doing challenges for, I'll separate them out into separate posts, and make exact specifications of what it should look like.

Flag pictures taken from CIA World Factbook, which is in the public domain.

How much hardcoding should be allowed, if any? Is it better to decide on a per-flag basis?

Your task is to output the flag, to a file, STDOUT or the screen, in any common format (SVG, PostScript, RAW, PNG).

Malawi

Pros: Relatively simple
Cons: The "beams of sunlight" may need to be simplified slightly as they are some weird shape that I don't even know a name for

Saint Pierre and Miquelon

Pros: Quite a lot of repetition. Complex but not impossible. Probably fun.
Cons: That ship and the lions are going to be quite difficult - probably need to be simplified a bit

Australia

Pros: Simple geometric shapes. There's nothing hugely overcomplicated here. Some repetition. Shouldn't be too hard.
Cons: The stars have already appeared in the Nepal question - there is some overlap.

Mongolia

Pros: Simple geometric shapes (mostly), but quite a lot of them.
Cons: The yin-yang bit is similar to the South Korean flag, which we've done already

Togo

Pros: Simple
Cons: Maybe too simple?

Answer 3

Rearrange pixels from one image to form another, with different pixel counts

This would be very similar to American Gothic in the palette of Mona Lisa: Rearrange the pixels except that the images would not necessarily have the same area. If the palette image is larger, then the pixels can be chosen amongst and some left unused. If the palette image is smaller, then the result will be resized/resampled to the same aspect ratio as the other image.

The inspiration for this challenge is a real world application, using limited numbers of colored tiles to make a mosaic copy of a full color image. There would be an unlimited number of white/background tiles, but I can't think of a way to represent that in the challenge description, so I'd probably just fake the number of white tiles for a given target resolution.

Answer 4

Draw the Tree of Life

A codegolf contest to render the tree of life data (which is in the simple Newick format) sideways in ASCII, using the same formatting as this example:

   __/a
__/  \b
  \   _/c
   \_/ \d
     \e

Note that the distance in the source data is ignored; the tree should be drawn as compact as possible.

The source data can be fed into the program via stdin or by opening a file or as a parameter to a function. The output should be printing to stdout.

The output should not be hard-coded; the tree data must be read in and parsed by the program.

Actually printing a tree on its side is itself a bit of a coding challenge; see this SO question for inspiration.

Answer 5

Multi-File Code Golf

This is a new challenge Idea. Multi-File Code Golf. The idea is to write your golfed code in more than one file, and your score is the size of the largest file.

Your Program

You need to fit the specs with a program that spans multiple files. Any languages that use multiple files are valid. For example you could use C++ with a header file, JS/HTML or Ruby with require. files may be named anything you want, and be in any directory.

Score equal to the size of your largest file. (in bytes)

Chalinge

(Originally I had tic-tac-toe, but I decided that was a bad idea.) I need a good idea for a challenge that will work well in this format. Any ideas? It needs to be complex enough for multiple files to be helpful.

Answer 6

Help me sweep the floors

I have to sweep the floor of an MxN foot floor every night, where M and N can be any value between 1 and 1000. I need to know the most efficient method of sweeping this floor so I can get it done in the least amount of time.

Rules:

1. Each stroke of the broom clears a 1 square foot area.
2. Each stroke of the broom can be directed in one of 4 directions - North, South, East, or West. You can represent these as N, S, E, and W, respectively.
3. When I make a stroke, if there is more than 1 unit of dirt on a square, 75% of the dirt will go onto the square directly swept towards, and the remaining 25% will be equally divided among the side squares. If there is less than 1 unit of dirt, 90% of the dirt will go onto to square swept towards, and the remaining 10% is divided among the side squares. The back square receives no dirt. If I sweep into the wall, 75% of the dirt remains on the swept square. If I sweep adjacent to the wall, there is only one side square.
4. Your program must keep track of the strokes I need to sweep each floor - this is your score.
5. I must stand in a square adjacent to the square I am sweeping. I can sweep that square in any direction, but I 95% of the time I will sweep to my right or left; otherwise, I brush the dirt into the air and choke or sweep it all over my feet.
6. Each square initially contains 1 unit of dirt. The floor is considered clean when no square has more than .025 units of dirt remaining on it.
7. When I take a step, I can either step onto an adjacent square or over an adjacent square onto the next square.
8. The floor is considered swept when the remaining dirt is contained in one square on the floor so I can pick it up.
9. I start at any position [0, {0-N}]. Your program must input a value in the range of 0-N on which I start.

Your program must return the minimum number of steps and strokes I take to sweep this floor. It may not backtrack and do some steps over, but it can use look-ahead - it must simulate sweeping the floor in actual life. It must take as input M and N, as well as a value in the range of 0-N specifying where the door is, and output to the screen how many strokes I must take to sweep the floor. Your score is the number of strokes I must take. The program that returns the lowest number of strokes for any input is the winner. Ties will be won by the smallest program character-wise. Your program will be disqualified if you do not explain the algorithm used in the answer.

code-challenge code-golf

Answer 7

Traders for life

In this game, each bot will own a factory that accepts N products, and can produce M of a different product, denoted by #,Input->#,Output. There are 3 products A,B, and C and three types of factories, A->B, B->C, and C->A. Each factory of the same type will input the same number of products, and outputs the same number of products. Each both will be assigned a factory type, which can be queried (as described below) Producing A->B->C->A will increase the total amount of A.

Example: Bot 1's factory is 5A->2B, and starts with 500A. Bot 2's factory is 3B->7C and starts with 300B. Bot 3's factory is 5C->6A and starts with 500C.

You start with $1000, and your goal is to increase that money. Each turn you will produce, buy, and then sell in that order.

To produce you will pass in the number of inputs. If you pass in more inputs than you currently have in inventory, then you will only produce what you have in inventory. If the amount input isn't divisible, then a remainder of your input will remain which couldn't be produced.

To sell, you will pass the type you want to sell, the price, and the max amount you will sell. To buy, you will pass the type you want to buy, the max you will pay for it, and the max amount you will buy. The buyer with the highest max price will then be paired up with the seller with the highest price that is under the buyer's price. The buyer will then buy as many products as possible at the seller's price. If the seller reaches his maximum of products to sell, then the buyer will continue to buy from the next seller. If the buyer reaches his maximum of products to buy, then the seller will continue to sell his product to the buyer with the next highest maximum price.

All products and dollar amounts are integers (there are no cents or partial products).

There will be 3 copies of each bot, each assigned to a different factory. These bots cannot communicate with each other or with any other bot.

The player with the most money across all of their bots after 500 rounds wins.

Any language can be used, and input/output will come through STDIO. If you wanted to produce 34 of your product, buy 10 of product A at the price $5 and sell 20 of product B at the price of $6, then you would pass in P,34 B,A,10,5 S,B,20,6.

At any time you can pass in:

I to query your inventory, which will return something like 5A 10B 8C

M to query the amount of money you have

T to query your history of trades. It will be a space delimited list of trades. Each trade will look like like B,1275,A,49,90 (You bought from player #1275 49 of product A at the price of $90) or S,385,B,29,30 (You sold to player #385 29 of product B at the price of $30).

R to query the number of rounds left

F to query your factory type. It will return something like 5A->2B

Answer 8

Smuggle these Pincodes

After many years, our covert agent has managed to amass a list of all PIN codes in an enemy nation.

But there is a complication. The government of the country did become aware of our actions. Now our agent needs to smuggle the PINs past the customs without being caught!

Our spy needs help. Hiding a list of 10 000 codes will be too difficult. Luckily, our government can enlist the help of its loyal programmers (you!).

The Challenge

Write a program that will output a list of all PIN codes from 0000 up to 9999 (inclusive). The program needs to be as short as possible to get past customs unnoticed.

Rules

• The PINs must each be on a separate line.
• The program may not output anything other than the required output. However, it may output one (and no more than one) line end after the last PIN; e.g. 9999\n.

And, in case you were wondering:

• Your program must not:
  • Depend on any external resources.
  • Depend on having a specific file name.
  • Take exceptionally long to run. If your program runs over a minute on an average home user’s computer, it’s invalid.
  • Be written in a programming language for which there did not exist a publicly available compiler / interpreter before this challenge was posted.

An example of the correct output can be seen here.

Scoring

The shortest code (in bytes, in any language) wins.

Any non-standard command-line arguments (arguments that aren’t normally required to run a script) count towards the total character count.

Your program’s output may deviate from the given list order, in which case your program’s byte count will incur a +10% penalty (rounded up).

Answer 9

Writing the Hydra Function

restricted-source optimization

---

Preamble

Sometime in the early 21st century, computer scientists would discover the Hydra function (also known as the Lächerlich function), f, whose signature is given by

R = f( A, B, L, x, y, z )

where A, B, L, and R are finite integers, and x, y, and z are integers in the range [-2³¹  2³¹).

The function would quickly rise to preeminence due to the fact that it can perform 40 useful and well-known binary operations on A and B, returning the result in R. These operations are listed in the section "Operations" below, which provides a rigorous description of each.

It is important to note here that "integer" refers to the mathematical concept of an integer. In particular, there is no concept of integer overflow or of binary representation. In the case of variables A, B, and L, integer values are unbounded. In the case of x, y, z, the variables may not violate their explicit bound; any operation that could potentially assign an out-of-range value to these variables is an error and forbidden.

Operations

The following code snippet defines all 40 (potential) operations of f. In each case, a name, description, and precise mathematical definition is provided. As a convenience, each operation also includes a C function that (notwithstanding data type bounds) implements the operation when compiled by gcc. In all cases, the mathematical definition should be considered authoritative.

<style>tr:nth-child(4n-3) td:first-child { width: 150px; font: bold 24px Times New Roman,Times,serif; }</style><style>tr:nth-child(4n-2) span { font-family: Courier New,monospace; }</style><style>tr:nth-child(4n) { font-family: Courier New,monospace; white-space:pre; }</style><style>tr:nth-child(4n) td { padding-bottom: 50px; }</style><script type="text/javascript" src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.10.1.min.js"></script><div>Note that \(\left\lfloor\frac{A}{B}\right\rfloor _0\) indicates "divide and truncate towards zero", and that \(\operatorname{sgn}\left( x\right)\) indicates the signum function evaluated at \(x\).<br><br>Also note that for operations conditionally returning \({\rm anything}\), "anything" may be any value representable as an integer, or a fatal error. "Anything" does not have to be consistent from operation to operation. You may rely on the results returned for "anything" in subsequent calculations.</div><hr><br><br><div id="main">1. 0 [Constant 0] (0) \[R = 0\cdot A + 0\cdot B\] {{return 0;}} 2. 1 [Constant 1] (1) \[R = 1 + 0\cdot A + 0\cdot B\] {{return 1;}} 3. 2 [Constant 2] (2) \[R = 2 + 0\cdot A + 0\cdot B\] {{return 2;}} 4. A [Value of A] (A) \[R = A + 0\cdot B\] {{return A;}} 5. A + B [Sum of A and B] (sum) \[R = A + B\] {{return A + B;}} 6. A - B [Difference of A and B] (diff) \[R = A - B\] {{return A - B;}} 7. AB [Product of A and B] (prod) \[R = AB\] {{return A*B;}} 8. A &#247; B [Truncated Quotient of A by B] (div) \[R = \left\{ {\begin{array}{*{20}{l}}!!{\rm{anything}}&{{\rm{if\ }}B = 0} \\!!{\left\lfloor {\frac{A}{B}} \right\rfloor _0}&{{\rm{otherwise}}}!!\end{array}} \right.\] {{return A/B;}} 9. A &#247; B Remainder [Remainder after Division of A by B] (rem) \[R = \left\{ {\begin{array}{*{20}{l}}!!{\rm{anything}}&{{\rm{if\ }}B = 0} \\!!{A - B\left\lfloor {\frac{A}{B}} \right\rfloor _0}&{{\rm{otherwise}}}!!\end{array}} \right.\] {{return A % B;}} 10. A modulo |B| [A Modulo |B|] (mod) \[R = \left\{ {\begin{array}{*{20}{l}}!!{\rm{anything}}&{{\rm{if\ }}B = 0} \\!!{A\operatorname{mod} \left| B\right|}&{{\rm{otherwise}}}!!\end{array}} \right.\] {{   int X, Q;!!   X = B < 0 ? -B : B;!!   Q = A % X;!!   return Q < 0 ? Q + X : Q;}} 11. A = B [A Equals B] (is) \[R = \left\{ {\begin{array}{*{20}{l}}!!{1}&{{\rm{if\ }}A = B} \\!!{0}&{{\rm{otherwise}}}!!\end{array}} \right.\] {{return A == B;}} 12. |A| > |B| [A is of Greater Magnitude than B] (gmag) \[R = \left\{ {\begin{array}{*{20}{l}}!!{1}&{{\rm{if\ }}\left| A\right| > \left| B\right|} \\!!{0}&{{\rm{otherwise}}}!!\end{array}} \right.\] {{return (A > 0 ? A : -A) > (B > 0 ? B : -B);}} 13. A &and; B [Both A and B are Nonzero] (and) \[R = \left\{ {\begin{array}{*{20}{l}}!!{1}&{{\rm{if\ }}\left( A \neq 0\right) \wedge \left( B \neq 0\right)} \\!!{0}&{{\rm{otherwise}}}!!\end{array}} \right.\] {{return A && B;}} 14. A &or; B [Either A or B is Nonzero] (or) \[R = \left\{ {\begin{array}{*{20}{l}}!!{1}&{{\rm{if\ }}\left( A \neq 0\right) \vee \left( B \neq 0\right)} \\!!{0}&{{\rm{otherwise}}}!!\end{array}} \right.\] {{return A || B;}} 15. A &#8891; B [Either A or B is Nonzero, but Not Both] (xor) \[R = \left\{ {\begin{array}{*{20}{l}}!!{1}&{{\rm{if\ }}\left( A \neq 0\right) \wedge \left( B = 0\right)} \\!!{1}&{{\rm{if\ }}\left( A = 0\right) \wedge \left( B \neq 0\right)} \\!!{0}&{{\rm{otherwise}}}!!\end{array}} \right.\] {{return (A != 0) ^ (B != 0);}} 16. A<sup>B</sup> [A to the Power of B] (pow) \[R = \left\{ {\begin{array}{*{20}{l}}!!{A^B}&{{\rm{if\ }}B \geq 0\rm{\ or\ }\left| A\right| = 1} \\!!{0}&{{\rm{otherwise}}}!!\end{array}} \right.\] {{return (int)pow( A, B );}} 17. &#189;(A + B) [Average (Arithmetic Mean) of A and B] (avg) \[R = \left\lfloor\frac{A + B}{2}\right\rfloor _0\] {{return (A + B)/2;}} 18. A<sup>2</sup> + B<sup>2</sup> [Sum of Squares of A and B] (sumsqs) \[R = A^2 + B^2\] {{return A*A + B*B;}} 19. A<sup>2</sup> - B<sup>2</sup> [Difference of Squares of A and B] (diffsqs) \[R = A^2 - B^2\] {{return A*A - B*B;}} 20. &#189;((-1)<sup>A</sup> - (-1)<sup>B</sup>) [Synchronicity of A and B] (sync) \[R = \left( -1\right)^A - \left( -1\right)^B\] {{return (int)(pow( -1, A ) - pow( -1, B ));}} 21. |A + B| [Absolute Sum of A and B] (abssum) \[R = \left| A + B\right|\] {{return A + B < 0 ? -(A + B) : (A + B);}} 22. |A - B| [Distance from A to B] (dist) \[R = \left| A - B\right|\] {{return A < B ? (B - A) : (A - B);}} 23. max( A, B ) [Maximum of A and B] (max) \[R = \max\left( A, B\right)\] {{return A > B ? A : B;}} 24. min( A, B ) [Minimum of A and B] (min) \[R = \min\left( A, B\right)\] {{return A < B ? A : B;}} 25. minmod( A, B ) [Minmod Limiter] (minmod) \[R = \left\{ {\begin{array}{*{20}{l}}!!{\min\left( A, B\right)}&{{\rm{if\ }}A > 0 {\rm\ and\ } B > 0} \\!!{\max\left( A, B\right)}&{{\rm{if\ }}A < 0 {\rm\ and\ } B < 0} \\!!{0}&{{\rm{otherwise}}}!!\end{array}} \right.\] {{   if( A > 0 && B > 0 )!!      return A < B ? A : B;!!   if( A < 0 && B < 0 )!!      return A > B ? A : B;!!   return 0;}} 26. A ? B : 0 [Return B Conditionally] (condb) \[R = \left\{ {\begin{array}{*{20}{l}}!!{B}&{{\rm{if\ }}A \neq 0} \\!!{0}&{{\rm{otherwise}}}!!\end{array}} \right.\] {{return A ? B : 0;}} 27. &#189;(A + B)(|B - A| + 1) [Sum of Integers from A to B] (sumatob) \[R = \frac{\left( A + B\right)\left( \left| B - A\right| + 1\right)}{2}\] {{return (A + B)*((B < A ? (A - B) : (B - A)) + 1)/2;}} 28. A <<<sub>2</sub> B [Left-shift A by B Zeroes in Binary] (rsh) \[R = \left\{ {\begin{array}{*{20}{l}}!!{2^B A}&{{\rm{if\ }}B \geq 0} \\!!{\left\lfloor\frac{A}{2^{-B}}\right\rfloor _0}&{{\rm{otherwise}}}!!\end{array}} \right.\] {{return B >= 0 ? A*(1 << B) : A/(1 << -B);}} 29. A <<<sub>10</sub> B [Left-shift A by B Zeroes in Decimal] (rsh10) \[R = \left\{ {\begin{array}{*{20}{l}}!!{10^B A}&{{\rm{if\ }}B \geq 0} \\!!{\left\lfloor\frac{A}{10^{-B}} \right\rfloor _0}&{{\rm{otherwise}}}!!\end{array}} \right.\] {{return (int)A*pow( 10, B );}} 30. A + sgn(B - A) [Increment A Towards B] (twrdb) \[R = A + \operatorname{sgn}\left( B - A \right)\] {{return A + (B > A) - (B < A);}} 31. |A| sgn(B) [Magnitude of A with the Phase of B] (magphs) \[R = \left| A\right|\operatorname{sgn}\left( B\right)\] {{return (A < 0 ? -A : A)*((B > 0) - (B < 0));}} 32. |A| > |B| ? A : B [Return Furthest From Zero: A or B] (ffzero) \[R = \left\{ {\begin{array}{*{20}{l}}!! {A\rm{\ or\ }B}&{{\rm{if\ }}\left| A\right| = \left| B\right|} \\!!{A}&{{\rm{if\ }}\left| A\right| > \left| B\right|} \\!!{B}&{{\rm{otherwise}}}!!\end{array}} \right.\] {{return (A < 0 ? -A : A) > (B < 0 ? -B : B) ? A : B;}} 33. gcd( |A|, |B| ) [Greatest Common Denominator of A and B] (gcd) \[R = \left\{ {\begin{array}{*{20}{l}}!!{\rm{anything}}&{{\rm{if\ }}A = 0\rm{\ or\ }B = 0} \\!!{\operatorname{gcd}\left( {\left| A\right| , \left| B\right|}\right)}&{{\rm{otherwise}}}!!\end{array}} \right.\] {{   int X, Y, T;!!   X = A < 0 ? -A : A;!!   Y = B < 0 ? -B : B;!!   while( Y != 0 ) {!!      T = Y;!!      Y = X % Y;!!      X := T;!!   }!!   return X;}} 34. lcm( |A|, |B| ) [Least Common Multiple of A and B] (lcm) \[R = \left\{ {\begin{array}{*{20}{l}}!!{\rm{anything}}&{{\rm{if\ }}A = 0\rm{\ or\ }B = 0} \\!!{\frac{AB}{\operatorname{gcd}\left( {\left| A\right| , \left| B\right|}\right)}}&{{\rm{otherwise}}}!!\end{array}} \right.\] {{   int X, Y, T, P;!!   X = A < 0 ? -A : A;!!   Y = B < 0 ? -B : B;!!   P = X*Y;!!   while( Y != 0 ) {!!      T = Y;!!      Y = X % Y;!!      X := T;!!   }!!   return P/X;}} 35. A*B/(A + B) [Harmonic Mean of A and B] (harm) \[R = \left\{ {\begin{array}{*{20}{l}}!!{\rm{anything}}&{{\rm{if\ }}A + B = 0} \\!!{\left\lfloor\frac{AB}{A + B}\right\rfloor _0}&{{\rm{otherwise}}}!!\end{array}} \right.\] {{return A*B/(A + B);}} 36. max(-|B|,min(|B|,A)) [Value of A Clipped to +/-|B|] (clip) \[R = \max\left( -\left| B\right| , \min\left( \left| B\right| , A\right)\right)\] {{   int X;!!   X = B < 0 ? -B : B;!!   return A < -B ? -B : (A > B : B : A);}} 37. A|B| - B|A| [Commutator Bracket of A and B] (comm) \[R = A\left| B\right| - B\left| A\right|\] {{return A*B < 0 ? (2*A*B*((B > 0) - (B < 0))) : 0;}} 38. |A| mod 10 = |B| mod 10 [A and B Have Same Last Decimal Digit] (sameldd) \[R = \left\{ {\begin{array}{*{20}{l}}!!{1}&{{\rm{if\ }}\left| A\right| = \left| B\right|\;\;\left(\operatorname{mod} 10\right)} \\!!{0}&{{\rm{otherwise}}}!!\end{array}} \right.\] {{   int X, Y;!!   X = A < 0 ? -A : A;!!   Y = B < 0 ? -B : B;!!   return X % 10 == Y % 10;}} 39. (A<sup>B</sup> - 1)/(A - 1) [Sum of First B Terms in Power Series 1 + A + A<sup>2</sup> + ...] (pwrsrs) \[R = \left\{ {\begin{array}{*{20}{l}}!!{\rm{anything}}&{{\rm{if\ }}B < 0} \\!!{\rm{anything}}&{{\rm{if\ }}A \leq 1} \\!!{\frac{A^B - 1}{A - 1}}&{{\rm{otherwise}}}!!\end{array}} \right.\] {{return (int)(pow( A, B ) - 1)/(A - 1);}} 40. B<sup>2</sup>/(A<sup>2</sup> + 1) [Squared Distance of the Line Ax + B to the Origin] (sqdist2orgn) \[R = \frac{B^2}{A^2 + 1}\] {{return B*B/(A*A + 1);}}</div><script type="text/javascript">$('#main').html( '<table>' + $('#main').html().replace( /([^\[]+) \[(.+?)\] \((.+?)\) \\\[(.+?)\\\] \{\{(.+?)\}\}/g, '<tr><td>$1</td></tr><tr><td>$2 (<span>$3</span>)</td></tr><tr><td>\\[$4\\]</td></tr><tr><td>$5</td></tr>' ).replace( /!!/g, "\n" ) + '</table>' );</script><script type="text/x-mathjax-config;executed=true">MathJax.Hub.Config( { "HTML-CSS": { preferredFont: "TeX", availableFonts: ["STIX","TeX"], linebreaks: { automatic: true }, EqnChunk: (MathJax.Hub.Browser.isMobile ? 10 : 50) }, tex2jax: { inlineMath: [ ["$", "$"], ["\\\\(","\\\\)"] ], displayMath: [ ["$$","$$"],["\\[", "\\]"] ], processEscapes: true, ignoreClass: "tex2jax_ignore|dno" }, TeX: { noUndefined: { attributes: { mathcolor: "red", mathbackground: "#FFEEEE", mathsize: "90%" }}, Macros: { href: "{}" } }, messageStyle: "none" } );</script><script src="//cdn.mathjax.org/mathjax/latest/MathJax.js?config=TeX-AMS_HTML-full"></script>

The Nature of f

The properties of f are summarized as follows:

• The operations in f are purchased with operation points (OP) and branching points (BP). f is implemented using no more than 120 OP and no more than 20 BP.

  OP and BP purchases costs apply once per code element purchased. For example, the code

  while( A > 0 )
     A = A - B;
  

  incurs the costs of one while loop, one condition, one assignment, and one binary operation, even if the condition, assignment, and binary operation may be evaluated more than once.

• No unary operations are permitted.

• Constant conditions (e.g. true, false, or equivalent) are permitted. All non-constant conditions must be explicit (e.g. no if( A )).

• Only the binary operations and conditions listed under "Binary Operations and Conditions" are permitted.

• The ternary operation <condition> ? <iftrue> : <iffalse> is permitted at the cost of 1 BP plus any cost(s) associated with the operands. Languages that don't explicitly support this ternary operation may implement it as a function.

• f must return a result in worst case O(log max(|A|,|B|)) time or better.

• f may recursively invoke itself at a cost of either 1 BP or 2 OP, but only to a worst case stack depth of O(log max(|A|,|B|)) or better.

• The following control structures are permitted in f:

  • if blocks cost 1 BP each plus the cost of the branch condition
  • if else blocks cost 2 BP each plus the cost of the branch condition
  • if elseif blocks cost 1 BP per if, elseif, or else, plus the cost(s) of any branch conditions
  • while loops and for loops cost 2 BP each plus the cost(s) of any initialization, loop condition, and loop update statements
  • do while loops cost 1 BP each plus the cost of the loop condition
  • goto, break, named break, continue, and named continue statements cost 1 BP each
  • return statements cost 1 BP each, with the exception of the last top-level return that appears in f, which costs nothing

  Programming languages that do not support the above structures may implement them as separate functions/methods/closures or as semantically equivalent code. For example, the code

   while( 1 ) {
      <statement>
      ...
      if( A == B )
         break;
   }
  

  is semantically equivalent to the code

   do {
      <statement>
      ...
   } while( A != B )
  

  and hence the former may be used at the cost of 1 BP (the cost of a do while loop).

Variables and Data Types

Variables and data types in f are summarized as follows:

• No variables may be defined or used by f except for the parameters A, B, L, x, y, z, which may be both read and assigned. Variable assignments may not be chained or nested in expressions (e.g. A = B = 0, w = y == 1 || (z = 10) are not permitted). If a programming language does not support assignment to parameters, parameters may alternatively be copied into proxy local variables at the start of the function. Once this is done, the original parameters may not be referenced.

• Variable assignment incurs no OP or BP costs.

• Assignment to x, y, and z must respect the strict bounds on these variables. For example, if A is not guaranteed to be bounded by [-2³¹  2³¹), the assignment x = A is an error and illegal, even if a programming language would ordinarily allow it. The assignment x = A % 2 (with the semantics of the % operator defined below) is legal since all values of A are guaranteed to yield a legal value of x.

  Note that these same restrictions apply when passing arguments to recursive invocations of f.

• It is recommended that A, B, L, x, y, z all be represented using the same type, but this is not a requirement. Implicit casts, explicit casts, method calls, and/or explicit function calls for converting between data types are allowed in all contexts, provided that both:

  • no clipping, truncation, or wraparound occurs as a result of the conversion
  • all operations on all data types are homomorphic to operations on the integers (notwithstanding the limited range of x, y, and z)

• Constants may be defined at no cost, but may only have values in the range [-2³¹  2³¹). Constants with values outside this range can be realized via binary operations (e.g. 123456789*987654321) but these operations incur costs as normal.

  A constant may be defined using any data type and converted (implicitly or explicitly) to any data type so long as the conversion respects the rules listed above.

• A, B, L are ideally represented by a "big integer" type while x, y, z are best represented as big integers or signed 32-bit ints, but these are not requirements. In particular, an implementation of f may choose to represent all variables using bounded data types, which is allowable subject to two restrictions:

  • under no circumstances may non-ideal effects such as clipping, truncation, floating point precision errors, etc. be used or exploited in the implementation of f
  • any implementation of f relying on bounded data types that has these types replaced with unbounded counterparts must function properly over all inputs in this expanded domain

Binary Operations and Conditions

Only the following set of binary operations and conditions may be used in the implementation of f. Each operation/condition has a cost of 1 OP. Operations/conditions may be implemented in any way (e.g. via infix operators, function calls, method calls, etc.) provided they are stateless and they conform exactly to the given definitions.

<style>tr:first-child { font: bold 18px Times New Roman,Times,serif; }</style><style>td { text-align:center; }</style><style>tr:nth-child(2n) { background-color:#eee; }</style><style>tr:not(:first-child) td:nth-child(3) { font-family: Courier New,monospace; white-space: pre; }</style><script type="text/javascript" src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.10.1.min.js"></script><div id="main">addition \[x + y\] {{x + y}} subtraction \[x - y\] {{x - y}} multiplication \[xy\] {{x*y}} integer division with truncation towards zero* \[\left\lfloor\frac{x}{y}\right\rfloor _0\] {{x/y}} remainder of integer division* \[x - y\left\lfloor\frac{x}{y}\right\rfloor _0\] {{x % y}} modulo** \[x \operatorname{mod} \left| y\right|\] {{int k, q;!!k = y < 0 ? -y : y;!!q = x % k;!!return q < 0 ? q + k : q;}} binary left shift \[{\begin{array}{*{20}{l}}!!{2^y x}&{{\rm{if\ }}y \geq 0} \\!!{\left\lfloor\frac{x}{2^{-y}} \right\rfloor _0}&{{\rm{otherwise}}}!!\end{array}}\] {{y >= 0 ? x*(1 << y) :!!   x/(1 << -y)}} binary right shift \[{\begin{array}{*{20}{l}}!!{\left\lfloor\frac{x}{2^y} \right\rfloor _0}&{{\rm{if\ }}B \geq 0} \\!!{2^{-y} x}&{{\rm{otherwise}}}!!\end{array}}\] {{y >= 0 ? x/(1 << y) :!!   x*(1 << -y)}} logical AND \[{\begin{array}{*{20}{l}}!!{1}&{{\rm{if\ }}\left( x \neq 0\right) \wedge \left( y \neq 0\right)} \\!!{0}&{{\rm{otherwise}}}\end{array}}\] {{x && y}} logical OR \[{\begin{array}{*{20}{l}}!!{1}&{{\rm{if\ }}\left( x \neq 0\right) \vee \left( y \neq 0\right)} \\!!{0}&{{\rm{otherwise}}}\end{array}}\] {{x || y}} equality (Dirac delta) \[{\begin{array}{*{20}{l}}!!{1}&{{\rm{if\ }}x = y} \\!!{0}&{{\rm{otherwise}}}\end{array}}\] {{x == y}} inequality \[{\begin{array}{*{20}{l}}!!{1}&{{\rm{if\ }}x \neq y} \\!!{0}&{{\rm{otherwise}}}\end{array}}\] {{x != y}} less than \[{\begin{array}{*{20}{l}}!!{1}&{{\rm{if\ }}x < y} \\!!{0}&{{\rm{otherwise}}}\end{array}}\] {{r < y}} greater than \[{\begin{array}{*{20}{l}}!!{1}&{{\rm{if\ }}x > y} \\!!{0}&{{\rm{otherwise}}}\end{array}}\] {{x > y}} less than or equal to \[{\begin{array}{*{20}{l}}!!{1}&{{\rm{if\ }}x \leq y} \\!!{0}&{{\rm{otherwise}}}\end{array}}\] {{x <= y}} greater than or equal to \[{\begin{array}{*{20}{l}}!!{1}&{{\rm{if\ }}x \geq y} \\!!{0}&{{\rm{otherwise}}}\end{array}}\] {{x >= y}} bitwise AND of absolutes \[\begin{array}{*{20}{l}}!!{\sum\limits_k {{x_k}{y_k}{2^k}} {\rm{\ given}}} \\!!{\,\,\,\,\,\,\,\left| x \right| = \sum\limits_k {{x_k}{2^k}} } \\!!{\,\,\,\,\,\,\,\left| y \right| = \sum\limits_k {{y_k}{2^k}} } \\!!{\,\,\,\,\,\,\,{x_k},{y_k} \in \left\{ {0,1} \right\}\,\,\forall \,k}!!\end{array}\] {{(x < 0 ? -x : x) &   !!(y < 0 ? -y : y)}}</div><hr><div>*division by zero is a fatal error<br>**modulo zero is a fatal error</div><script type="text/javascript">$('#main').html( '<table cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Operation</td><td>Definition</td><td>C Code (gcc)</td></tr>' + $('#main').html().replace( /([^\[]+) \\\[(.+?)\\\] \{\{(.+?)\}\}/g, '<tr><td>$1</td><td>\\[$2\\]</td><td>$3</td></tr>' ).replace( /!!/g, "\n" ) + '</table>' );</script><script type="text/x-mathjax-config;executed=true">MathJax.Hub.Config( { "HTML-CSS": { preferredFont: "TeX", availableFonts: ["STIX","TeX"], linebreaks: { automatic: true }, EqnChunk: (MathJax.Hub.Browser.isMobile ? 10 : 50) }, tex2jax: { inlineMath: [ ["$", "$"], ["\\\\(","\\\\)"] ], displayMath: [ ["$$","$$"],["\\[", "\\]"] ], processEscapes: true, ignoreClass: "tex2jax_ignore|dno" }, TeX: { noUndefined: { attributes: { mathcolor: "red", mathbackground: "#FFEEEE", mathsize: "90%" }}, Macros: { href: "{}" } }, messageStyle: "none" } );</script><script src="//cdn.mathjax.org/mathjax/latest/MathJax.js?config=TeX-AMS_HTML-full"></script>

Objective

Your objective is to write a function or a program containing a function that implements as many of the 40 operations of f as possible. When invoked at the top level, the arguments of f are assigned as follows:

• A and B specify the two general operands for the operation being selected. For any of the 40 listed operations where the result is not symmetric in A and B, you may return a result for swapped A and B if desired. For example, the function A + sgn(B - A) may alternatively return the value of B + sgn(A - B). Operations with swapped operands should be documented in your submission.

• L must always be zero when passed to the top level invocation of f. Recursive invocations of f may pass any legal value to L.

• x, y and z collectively specify the operation to be performed. This datum can be encoded any way you desire (respecting the limited range of these parameters). Your submission should include a list of at least one (x,y,z) tuple per implemented operation that causes f to compute the result for that operation. You may assume that only these tuples will be passed to a top level invocation of f, hence f may exhibit arbitrary behaviour (including errors and/or illegal operations) if undocumented tuples are passed to top level invocations.

  As with L, recursive invocations of f may pass any legal values to x, y, and z. The results of any such intermediary operations need not be documented.

Scoring

Scoring rules are as follows:

• If f does not implement all 40 operations, score 10 points per implemented operation plus 1 point per unused BP plus 1 point per unused OP.
• If f does implement all 40 operations, score 400 points plus 50 points per unused BP plus 25 points unused OP.

The highest scoring submission is the winner.

Answer 10

Origami Code Golf

I like origami (especially unit origami), but lack the patience to actually complete a project.

Sounds like a wonderful job for a computer!

Objective

Make a program or function that accepts a series of numbers (see next part) and outputs a folded version of a 1 x 1 square.

Input

You will receive a list of numbers {a,b,c,d,e,f},{g,h,i,j,k,l}... (curly braces only added for clarity) Each set of numbers corresponds to 3 coordinates (a,b), (c,d) and (e,f). (a,b) and (c,d) each lie on the unit square (which also means that it is in the first quadrant). (e,f) lies within the unit square, but on a portion of the paper that is not on the line formed by (a,b) and (c,d).

(a,b) and (c,d) determine the line over which to fold the paper.

The portion of the paper that (e,f) lies in determines which side of the paper remains stationary during the fold. You may assume that this value will always lie on a portion of the square (e.g. not on a part of the square that is not there because of a fold).

For example, the input 0.5, 0, 0.5, 1, 0.25, 0.5 means that one should fold the paper in half over the vertical line at 0.5, with the left side remaining stationary.

Each fold (set of input numbers) is sequential, so one fold is made after another.

For example, if the previous example was followed by the input 0, 0.5, 1, 0.5, 0.75, 0.75, the paper should be folded over the horizontal line at 0.5, with the top part remaining stationary.

Output

Your program or function must only output (graphically) the resulting shape and rotation of the folding. It is not required to output the correct location or size.

Test Cases

input 0, 0.5, 1, 0.5, 0.5, 0.75 -

input 0, 0, 1, 1, 0.25, 0.5 -

input - 0.5, 1, 1, 0, 0.25, 0.5, 0, 0.25, 1, 0.25, 0.25, 0.75 -

input - 0.5, 0, 1, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 1, 0.5, 0.5, 1, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 1, 0, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0, 0.5, 0.5, 0, 0.5, 0.5, 0, 0.25, 1, 0.25, 0.5, 0.5

This is code-golf, so shortest code (in bytes) wins.

Answer 11

Phoneword generator

This is code-golf

Goal

The goal is to write the shortest phoneword generator.

Input

As input you get for just a sequence of numbers (0-9). Given via stdin.

Output

You should write the first 15 possible results to stdout bonus points if the output only contains real words. The words need to have the exact same length like the input string.

What if there are less than 15 options?

Then you can just make up words.

Phoneword

A phoneword, is a sequence of characters, that is typed with letters in your phone which map to the numbers they display.

How to treat 0 and 1

If the input contains a 0 or a 1, you should treat them as 0 and 1. To make a word with them anyway, you can use leetspeak.

Mapping

For the mapping check this picture:

Taken from wikipedia

As example I use codegolf itself: 26334653 translates to CODEGOLF it also gives many more words, here is a list.

Bonus

You can divide the amount of characters by 2, if your code gives only words which are in listed in the Oxford dictionary. For that you are allowed to use a web api to check them.

Answer 12

Generate a Random Boolean Expression

code-golf random generation

In this challenge, you generate a random Boolean expression -- and then evaluate it.

Input

Nothing, or a random seed if your program requires one.

Output

A random Boolean expression and its value, formatted as a string

<expr> = <value>

The expression should be generated according to the following BNF grammar:

<expr> ::= "0" | "1"
         | "(" <expr> "^" <expr> ")"
         | "(" <expr> "v" <expr> ")"
         | "(" <expr> ">" <expr> ")"
         | "~" <expr>

Here, ^ stands for binary AND, v for binary OR, > for implication, and ~ for NOT. Whitespace is not significant. The correct value for the expression should be self-explanatory. Some correct outputs include

0 = 0
~ (~1 ^ 1) = 1
((1v1) ^ ~(0 >(1 ^ ~~~0))) = 0

Detailed Rules

Assuming a perfect random number generator, your program must be able to generate any valid Boolean expression with nonzero probability (discounting whitespace). You must use you language's standard RNG, or one of higher quality.

You can write either a function or a full program, and a function can either return its result or print it to STDOUT. The fewest bytes wins, and standard loopholes are disallowed.

---

I'd like some input on whether this challenge is essentially similar to either this or this.

Answer 13

Operator, i can't remember my phone number... code-challenge quine

"Hello? Operator? How do i get my phone to tell me its own number?"

The challenge is to write a quine -- from your cellphone. Not a smartphone with a virtual keyboard, mind you. One of the old phones, where to get a 'c' you have to press 2 three times.

Because programmers are lazy, you want to do it in the least amount of keypresses.

---

A previous challenge (Calculate cell-phone keypresses) was to calculate the amount of keypresses it takes to produce a set of characters on a cellphone keyboard.

The challenge there wrote out all the keymappings well, so i'll just quote it here.

The keymaps are:

1:1
2:abcABC2
3:defDEF3
4:ghiGHI4
5:jklJKL5
6:mnoMNO6
7:pqrsPQRS7
8:tuvTUV8
9:wxyzWXYZ9
0:<space><newline>0

To type exaMPle TExt 01 , you would press 33 99 2 6666 77777 555 33 0 8888 33333 99 8 0 <a 1-sec pause here in real life but we'll ignore it>000 1 for a total of 37 keypresses.

The * key brings up a map of special characters:

.,'?!
"-()@
/:_;+
&%*=<
>£€$¥
¤[]{}
\~^¡¿
§#|`

with the first one (.) highlighted. You can move to highlight the required character using rectangular navigation keys and it takes another keypress to select.

So to insert $, you would press *↓↓↓↓→→→<select> i.e. a total of 9 key-presses.

This means, that if you use a = 3 in your code, that is a (1), space (1), = (8), space (1), 3 (7), for a total of 18, even though it's only 5 bytes.

So as not to rule out languages/entries that use characters outside of this range, you can reach it with #, insert, special, select, {type the Unicode number of the character}, select for a total of 5 + Unicode #. I suppose you could use this trick to reduce the number of keypresses via *.

Scoring

Your score is the number of keypresses used to type out the code. There is a Stack Snippet that you can use to calculate. It automatically picks the lower number if you could use either * or #.

The entry with the lowest score after 2 weeks wins!

Answer 14

Find longest alphabet path (code-golf)

You are given a 2d array of size nxn that is filled with lowercasel letters a-z. Your goal is to find the longest continous path by only moving up/down/left/right. A path is a sequence of cells of the 2d grid, where the successor of the current cell must be a neighbour that is above, below, left or right. Also, each cell of the array can only be visited once per sequence. The value (the lowercase letter) of the successor must right before or after the one in the current cell (if the current cell has the value c, the successor must have value b or d).

Output

You have to solve two tasks:

• The challenge stated above
• The challenge stated above plus another restriction: successors can only have the next letter in the alphabet, but not the previosu (if the current cell has the value c the successor must have the value d)

The output must consist of two n x n grids the same size as the input, each for one of the two tasks. The grids have to be the identical again, but all the unused cells that are not part of the longest sequence have to be set to a whitespace. If there are two or more longest sequences, only one arbitrary one of them has to be in the output.

Testcases (more to be added)

Input:  Out1:  Out2:     
ababa   ababa  ab         
babab   babab        
ababa   ababa        
babab   babab        
ababa   ababa

Input:  Out:  Out:
aba     aba   ab
aba
aba

abcd  abcd  abcd
hgfe  hgfe  hgfe
gfeb  gfeb  
babc  babc

Answer 15

Logic Dots code-golfpuzzle-solver - Posted

Answer 16

Hide your code in a Boggle board!

cops-and-robberscode-golfboggle

This proposal is intended to supersede my earlier proposal Find the Needle in the Haystack, of which I'm not convinced any more that it would work very well. I'll keep both proposals around for now, though.

The Cops' Challenge

First, choose a program output, consisting of less than 100 printable ASCII characters (character code 0x20 to 0x7E, inclusive) - in particular the program must be written on a single line.
Next, you should write a number of programs (not necessarily in the same language), which all output that exact same string (including any trailing newlines) to STDOUT or closest alternative. Each of those programs should be made up of less than 100 printable ASCII characters, too.
Finally, design a Boggle board, which contains all of these programs. The Boggle board may contain as many unused character as you wish, but it has to be rectangular and all characters have to be in the printable ASCII range. See "Boggle Rules" below for how the Boggle board works.

You want the number of programs to be large, the board to be small and the programs to be hard to find.

None of the programs must take any input. You may print to STDOUT, a GUI dialog (as with JavaScript's alert()), or assume a REPL environment (like a browser console) - but if it's different from STDOUT, you need to state clearly where your output will go in each case.

Each program has to complete within 5 seconds on a reasonable machine. You are not allowed to use cryptographic methods, hashing functions, random seeds or string compression.

If your submission's boggle board is X characters wide, and Y characters tall, and you've hidden N programs in it, your submission's score is N³/(X*Y).

You should deliver:

• X, Y, N and your score.
• The languages of your N programs, including output destination if it differs from STDOUT.
• The Boggle board.
• The output of the programs.

An answer is cracked if N programs in the specified languages are found by a single robber (see The Robbers' Challenge below). If your answer has not been cracked for 7 days, you may claim immunity by revealing the programs in your answer (to prove that your answer was solvable).

The winner will be the immune submission with the highest score.

The Robbers' Challenge

Every user has one attempt at cracking each submission. Your cracking attempt will be a list of programs found in a the submission's Boggle board. If your guess matches the description (all programs can be found according to the Boggle rules, all produce the correct output to the correct destination, and they are written in the required languages), and you are the first correct guess, then you get N*X*Y points. It is important to note that your programs do not have to exactly match the originals, as long as they meet the specification and can be found in the Boggle board. This means there could be more than one correct answer.

The robber with the most points wins. In the case of a tie, the robber who submitted fewer cracks wins.

Robbers should post their cracks as answers to the associated Robbers' thread.

Boggle Rules

• To find a program in a Boggle board, you start at an arbitrary cell and add characters to the string by repeatedly moving to one of its neighbours.
• You may move one cell at a time, horizontally, vertically, or diagonally.
• No cell must be used more than once (within a single program or by multiple programs).

Example

Consider this Boggle board as a cop submission:

1$int
arun"
!pts0
b "2K

Along with the specification that the output is 20, and that there are 2 CJam programs, one Python 2 program and one Ruby program. A robber could now find:

• K in the bottom right corner and 20 next to it as two valid CJam program.

• print "20" as a valid Python 2 program:

  __i__
  _r_n"
  _pt_0
  _ "2_
  

• puts"20" as a valid Ruby program:

  _____
  __u_"
  _pts0
  __"2_
  

If no one cracked this, the cop's score would be 4²/(5*4) = 0.8. If someone did crack this, that robber would get 4*5*4 = 80 points.

Sandbox Notes

• I intend to provide stack snippets which generate leaderboards for the cops and robbers.
• The scores probably need some balancing. Suggestions?
• I admit that the robbers' challenge is pretty similar to Calvin's Hobbies' recent challenge. This happened purely by accident - I was originally thinking about a word search C'n'R, which would have been too easily brute-forcible, so I changed it to a Boggle board. Of course, that doesn't matter when considering if it's a duplicate of course, but I think with hand-designed boards, looking for programs with fixed outputs in prescribed languages, makes this quite different and should hopefully make for a more balanced challenge. Furthermore, the cops' challenge of designing the boards is completely different. Please let me know if you disagree, though.
• Should I allow cells to be reused within a single program?

Answer 17

Cursor Wars

king-of-the-hill

This question is based off of my previous Navigate Text with Arrow Keys golf. Here, a segment of text is the battle arena, and the opponents move like cursors.

Idea 1: Tron / Light-Bikes

As the cursors move left to right, they paint parts of the text. Neither cursor can move through a painted area. The cursor who runs out of moves first loses.

To add a twist to the board's topology, I could make it so that the text area is flipped for the opponent. If I see the board:

X-----
---
------Y

Then the opponent sees the board:

Y------
---
-----X

With line-wrapping working differently for each player, they don't have the same movement patterns.

Idea 2: Area Painting

Like in the Tron idea, cursors paint an area. The cursor that paints the most area wins.

I could make it make a few versions

• Area painted once cannot be repainted: the winner is the cursor that painted the majority of area
• Area can painted my moving right and cleared by moving left (backspacing). The winner is the one that painted the most area times time. (Each time step, players earn one point per painted area.)

Answer 18

War of the Partitions

You have been assigned 1000 men to your cause, and you must fight your opponent on 20 different battlefields simultaneously. You must decide how to split up your 1000 men into 20 ways. Furthermore, since the Nth battlefield is larger than the (N+1)th battlefield, the 20 partitions must be in non-increasing order.

Each battlefield will have a skirmish. If you send more men than your opponent, you win that skirmish. Winning more skirmishes than your opponent across all battlefields scores you 1 Battle Point.

You will then face every other opponent, where you will be allowed to reassign your men to another location. You have a large supply of necromancers that allow you to keep all of your men alive from battle to battle, so you may allocate all 1000 men every time you face another opponent.

You will face each opponent 25 times. The player with the most Battle Points wins.

IO

You will be passed a string of the history of the battles between you and your current opponent. Each line consists of a different battle. The choices will be space separated, and your opponent's choices will be listed first, separated by a comma. The following input:

50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50,60 59 58 57 56 55 54 53 52 51 49 48 47 46 45 44 43 42 41 40
50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50,51 51 51 51 51 51 51 51 51 51 51 51 51 51 51 51 51 51 51 21

would represent two battles between a player. The first one would be a tie (each player won 10 skirmishes), while the second you won a Battle Point by winning 19 skirmishes.

You must return a string containing a space separated list of integers. The total of all of the values must be 1000, and must be in decreasing order.

Answer 19

Code File Header

Do you have a large number of source files that you forgot to put a header on, but never bothered. Well then this challenge is for you! This is code golf, so shortest program that works wins.

The Challenge

Write a function (if your language doesn't support this, write a program, that accepts a cmd line arg for the file name) that takes the name of a file then attaches to the top of that file a comments section stating the name of the author, the current date, and the file name, as comments in your language (if your language supports comments, if not then in C-Style/Doxygen).

For instance, if your language was C/C++ the following must be appended at the top. using myself as the example.

/** \author Henry Schmale
 * \date 2015-02-19
 * \file [File Name]
 */

Notes

• You may subtract the length of your name from your submission.
• Languages that don't support file I/O are not eligible for this code golf.
• The date code should be in a human readable format, no unix time. Preferably in ISO format.
• if your language supports multiple comment formats, you may use either or so long as the final result is the same, a documentation header on that file.

Answer 20

I'm only posting this in the sandbox because it may be too broad, even for a pop-con. If it gets some support I'll post it very soon.

Generating Postmodernist Writing and Other Logorrhea

Postmodernist writings are known for dealing with highly abstract ideas, potentially in a verbose manner that may sound nonsensical to someone reading them. This type of writing is often called logorrhea, and is not limited to postmodernism.

People have made programs that use natural language processing to generate realistic looking academic writings that are actually utter nonsense. One example is the Postmodernism Generator (wiki), which creates a random postmodernist essay every time the page is loaded. Another example is SCIgen (wiki), which can generate random papers about computer science.

Your task in this popularity contest is to write a program that can generate random, convincing paragraphs of academic logorrhea. You can choose what topic your program will generate text about. Postmodernism, CS, math, physics, and philosophy seem to be likely choices, but you can choose something else.

• Your program must be able to take in a 32 bit integer (a value from 0 to 2³²-1) as a seed value and output a random paragraph of text on your topic. None of the 2³² outputs should be identical. (If desired, you can include an option for no input, where the seed number is just chosen randomly.)
• The paragraphs should be from 2 to 8 sentences long and between 300 and 1000 characters. The sentences should start with capitals and end with periods. Including other punctuation is optional.
• The actual content of the sentences does not need to make grammatical sense, though it should consist of real English words. Presumably, the more it does make sense the more it will be upvoted.
• You do not need to include author names or citations like the Postmodernism Generator does. You could though, and you are welcome to take some liberties and generate a full essay or a mini-paper or something if it's clear that what you're doing is more difficult that just generating a paragraph.
• You may use any NLP libraries or resources, provided they don't already automatically generate random academic text. e.g. taking a paragraph from a random SCIgen paper would not be allowed at all.

The highest voted answer wins.

popularity-contest

Answer 21

Which Children Don't Play Well Together? [code-golfchallenge]

You are a kindergarten teacher who is having problems with fights breaking out among the students. You have noticed that altercations happen only when certain groups of children are together. A group of children who can't play well together, but will coexist peacefully if any one student is removed from the group, is known as a MIKG (minimal incompatible kindergartener group). Every MIKG contains at least two children. To help prevent problems, you decide to identify all such groups of kindergarteners.

Each day, your class has Group Reading Time. This involves dividing the children into groups of 1 or more students, who take turns reading pages from a picture book. If all the children from an MIKG are placed in the same reading group, a commotion will erupt. The distraction rapidly involves all the students in the class, so you can't tell which reading group it originated from.

You want to find all the MIKGs as soon as possible, so you write a computer program to help you do the math. Let f(N) be the maximum number of days it will take to identify all the MIKGs in a class of size N, assuming an optimal strategy is used. The program should not take more than f(N) days to find the answer.

Input/Output

At the beginning of the program, it takes a positive integer input of N which tells the number of students in the class. Then, the program creates a plan for the day's reading groups. The user (kindergarten teacher) will input 1 if a disruption occurred during reading time, or a 0 if it remained calm. When the program determines all the MIKGs, it shall print them out and exit.

Challenge

You will be given random test cases for class sizes between (a) and (b). The goal is to determine the MIKGs in as few days as possible. The program that makes the smallest amount of queries is the winner, with tiebreak by earliest post.

Restrictions

• The program must respond in under (x) seconds
• Due to the interactivity requirement, you must submit a full program, not a function.
• You may specify any format for the I/O as long as it is clear, unambiguous, consistent, and doesn't use characters other than printable ASCII and newlines.

Sandbox notes

• TODO: add examples
• A formula in terms of Dedekind numbers M(n) for the number of possibilities:
• TODO: fix formula
• TODO: create random test case generator
• using http://www.emis.de/journals/EJC/Volume_4/PDF/v4i2r15.pdf (?)

Answer 22

Musical Blinkenlights

code-golf hardware music

---

Introduction

If you take a look at the front panel of your desktop or laptop computer, chances are that you'll find a handful of blinkenlights, including a hard disk activity indicator.

^{Image taken from here}

The idea of this challenge is to "play" the Shave and a Haircut melody with that light.

The Task

Your task is to write a full program with the following behavior. If the program is placed in an empty directory, compiled (if applicable) and run, it causes the hard drive activity light to blink the notes of the Shave and a Haircut melody (unless, of course, the hard drive is active for some other reason). After that, it shall exit gracefully.

Precise Rules

The specification of the melody is as follows. Let t be a unit of time between 0.2 seconds and 0.7 seconds. Starting from some time tinit, the activity light shall blink at tinit, tinit + t, tinit + 1.5*t, tinit + 2*t, tinit + 3*t, tinit + 5*t, and tinit + 6*t. The blink must be long enough to be noticed by the human eye, but no more than 0.25*t.

Your program may create and modify any files and subdirectories in the directory it is placed in, including its own source code. The program does not have to be cross-platform, but you must state your operating system in your answer, and any necessary hardware requirements. In particular, some environments allow the blinkenlights to be controlled manually; this is perfectly acceptable, but must be explicitly stated.

Your program may not damage or significantly alter the host computer.

Scoring

This is code-golf, so the lowest byte count wins. Standard loopholes are disallowed.

---

Sandbox Notes

My main concern is whether my challenge would be too similar to this.

Answer 23

I've been reading this forum for a bit and I thought it might be a good idea to do a short sequence of challenges themed on famous mathematicians. It's my first post here so please point out any shortcomings.

It is Irving Kaplansky's birthday today. Among other things he is famous for his conjectures on group rings. It is one of these conjectures in mathematics that requires virtually no special knowledge to understand. There a couple of words that need explaining in them but their definitions are very simple. These words are "group", "torsion-free group", "ring", "domain", "group ring", "idempotent", "unit".

Please read up if you want to. This challenge doesn't require understanding these words or the conjecture. All that's needed is the concept of a finite cyclic group. I'm sure most of you know what it is, but I'll give a short introduction. A cyclic group of order n can be understood as what you get when you take something (whatever) called a generator, say p, and decide that it can be raised to integer powers. These powers can be multiplied like so: p^k * p^l = p^k+l. But there's one catch: whenever the exponents of the powers give the same remainder from the division by n, these powers are considered equal. This means, in particular, that there are exactly n powers really: p⁰, p¹,...,p^n-1. Any other power is equal to one of these.

The challenge is to implement a certain operation on certain formal expressions involving these powers. The expressions are of this form:

r₀ * p⁰ + r₁ * p¹ + ... + r_n-1 * p^n-1,

where all r_i are real numbers.

The operation, called multiplication, consists in, first, multplying two such expressions as if they were real sums, that is for example, for n=3:

(2 * p⁰ + 3 * p¹ + 2 * p²) * (0 * p⁰ + 1 * p¹ + 2 * p²)=

(2 * p⁰) * (0 * p⁰) + (2 * p⁰) * (1 * p¹) + (2 * p⁰) * (2 * p²) +

(3 * p¹) * (0 * p⁰) + (3 * p¹) * (1 * p¹) + (3 * p¹) + (2 * p²) +

(2 * p²) * (0 * p⁰) + (2 * p²) * (1 * p¹) + (2 * p²) + (2 * p²).

Then, we simplify each of the summands according to the rule

(r * p^k) * (s * p^l) = (r * s) * (p^k * p^l) = (r * s) * p^k+l.

And finally, we simplify the resulting sum according to the rule

(r * p^k) + (s * p^k) = (r + s) * p^k.

This means that for n=3, we have 2 * p² + 5 * p⁵ = 7 * p² because p²=p⁵!

The resulting sum is again of the form

r₀ * p⁰+ r₁ * p¹ + ... + r_n-1 * p^n-1

after we order the summands by the exponents.

This operation is exactly the product in the group ring R[C], where R is the field of real numbers and C is a finite cyclic group. This group ring doesn't satisfy the hypothesis of Kaplansky's conjecture because finite cyclic groups aren't torsion-free.

Your task is to implement this in any language. Your program/procedure/whatever has to take a natural number n>0 as user input. This will be the order of your cyclic group. Then it has to take 2n "real numbers" as user input. I don't really care what the "real numbers" are in your implementation. They could be ints for all I care. Just make them something that can reasonably be interpreted as real numbers and has a reasonable arithmetic. The first n numbers will be the coefficients of the first formal sum and the other n numbers will be the coefficients of the second formal sum. You need to output the n coefficients of their product. You don't need to compute the product in the way describe above. It just has to be correct (modulo rounding errors and other things computers do wrong with numbers).

Shortest code wins. You can assume the input is valid. Both input and output can be in any reasonable form. I'm not sure if this is a good restriction on this site, but I'd like you to think "actually usable". Though I don't really care about how long it takes to compute. I guess all standard loopholes apply, as I've noticed it seems to be a mantra here. :-)

As I said, please help me improve this challenge and oh, feel free to edit.

Answer 24

Functioning HTML-Encoded Program

---

Introduction

When showing code to others on the web, some characters are generally replaced by their HTML-encoded entities. Browsers display this properly, but if a user copies the code directly from HTML or a script tries running the code without decoding its entities, the code will likely contain errors.

Challenge

You are to come up with a program that uses all of the following five characters: ", &, ', <, and >. When encoded to their named XHTML entities, the code must still run using the following respective entities: ", &, ', < and >. The code must be able to run both ways without throwing errors. Each of the five characters must be used outside of comments and string-like objects at least once (ie. for JS, outside of literal regex). You may use an expression in place of a statement up to one time (if your language supports it).

Example JS Script (1/5 required characters)

Unencoded: (Sets lt to true)

var lt = 6;
lt = 3 < lt;

Encoded: (Sets lt to 2)

var lt = 6;
lt = 3 < lt;

Encoder/Decoder

Here's a converter to make testing your code easy (click run code to use):

function encode() {
  document.getElementById('post').value = document.getElementById('pre').value.replace(/&/g, '&amp;').replace(/"/g, '&quot;').replace(/'/g, '&apos;').replace(/</g, '&lt;').replace(/>/g, '&gt;');
  if (entity=document.getElementById('pre').value.match(/&\S+?;/)) alert('Warning: Unencoded text may already have entities. (ie: ' + entity[0] + ')');
} function decode() {
  document.getElementById('pre').value = document.getElementById('post').value.replace(/&quot;/g, '"').replace(/&apos;/g, '\'').replace(/&lt;/g, '<').replace(/&gt;/g, '>').replace(/&amp;/g, '&')
  if (entity=document.getElementById('post').value.match(/&(?:[\s;]|[^\s;]*(?:\s|$))|<|>|'|"/)) alert('Warning: Encoded text may contain unencoded characters. (ie: ' + entity[0][0] + ')');
}

<label for="pre"><b>Unencoded:</b></label> <button onclick="encode()">Encode</button><br /><textarea id="pre" style="width:100%;min-height:49px;resize:vertical"></textarea><br /><br />
<label for="post"><b>Encoded:</b></label> <button onclick="decode()">Decode</button><br /><textarea id="post" style="width:100%;min-height:49px;resize:vertical"></textarea>

The shortest functioning unencoded code block wins. Have fun!

Answer 25

Here's a puzzle to be split into two questions:

Build an evil-defying Tetris AI

Build a program that takes the state of a current board and a piece and attempts to find the optimal space for it.

Your program will be scored by the number of points it can score against the evil Tetris block generators in the question below. Highest score wins. (scoring algorithm to come later)

Build an evil Tetris block generator

Build a program that attempts to take the state of a current board and generate the worst possible piece for it.

Your program will be scored by the total number of points the AIs built in the question above can score against it. Lowest score wins.

Answer 26

It's just a flesh wound!

The idea is to create a program that:

• If any one of the four quarters (counted in bytes) is removed, the program outputs "Tis' but a scratch" (exactly, with optional newline).
• If any two of the four quarters are removed, the program outputs "Just a flesh wound.".
• If any three of the four quarters are removed, the program outputs "Let's call it a draw, then.".
• The full program should output "None shall pass.".

Rules:

• The program has to have length divisible by four (4).
• The program must not read it's own source or it's length in any way.
• The output is to stdout if it is possible in your language (REPL output is considered valid in this case).
• The answer with the fewest bytes wins.

Answer 27

Programming Tetris Blocks (Even More Literally?)

In this challenge, you will write a Tetris AI. There's one twist though: the AI will operate from the perspective of the Tetris blocks themselves.

Note: I am worried about the novelty of this question. The key is "the perspective of the Tetris blocks themselves." In order to make this interesting, I have to give the AI a bare minimum of information needed to make a move. Otherwise, it will just be a regular Tetris AI challenge.

When a Tetris block is spawned at the top of the map, a new AI object is created. Each time step, and the block receives data about its immediate surroundings and returns a move (move left/right, rotate clockwise/counterclockwise, or nothing).

An idea as to "block vision": each of the four squares in a block each have four "eyes," one on each side. Each eye returns the distance to the nearest wall/block (including/excluding other squares in the same block?). This means that the AI will receive exactly sixteen numbers each update.

#######
# 1234#
#  #  #
#### ##
#######

If a 2D array where each row (1st level) is a square and each column (second level) is an eye in the directions [U,D,L,R], then here is what could be seen as input, with 0s representing an adjoining block.

[[1,2,2,0],[1,1,0,0],[1,3,0,0],[1,2,0,1]]

More details coming sometime not now.

Answer 28

Traffic Troubles

king-of-the-hill

Background

Consider the following grid:

    a   b   c
    |   |   |
    |   |   |
    |   |   |
d---+---+---+---e
    |1  |2  |3
    |   |   |
    |   |   |
f---+---+---+---g
    |4  |5  |6
    |   |   |
    |   |   |
h---+---+---+---i
    |7  |8  |9
    |   |   |
    |   |   |
    j   k   l

I've marked every endpoint with a letter a-l, and every + with a number 1-9. Imagine, for a moment, that this grid represents a small section of a town. Each | or - represents one segment of a two-way road, and each + represents an intersection, which will have a corresponding stoplight.

During the game, cars will be added and removed from the grid at the endpoints a-l. Cars move exactly one space (through one segment of road or through one intersection) per turn, and never change direction. Thus, if a car enters the grid at endpoint d, it will exit after reaching endpoint e. We may assume that the cars are smart enough to avoid all collisions. They will never move to a space occupied by another vehicle, and they will never enter an intersection when the stoplight they see is red. When a car reaches the opposite endpoint, it disappears and can be safely forgotten.

Assume that we have a variable entitled public_unhappiness that is initialized to 0.

If a car following the above rules may not move due to another vehicle or a stoplight, the value of public_unhappiness is increased by 1.

//SANDBOX NOTE: This formula is linear, but one could say that unhappiness goes up exponentially the longer you sit at a stoplight. This formula is subject to change.

We pit two bots against each other, both controlling traffic flow in different ways. One bot aims to maximize public_unhappiness and the other aims to minimize it. We will refer to the former as The Driver and the latter as The Traffic Engineer. Because this KotH is inherently unbalanced, Drivers and Traffic Engineers will face off in a round-robin tournament (playing only against the opposing faction) and will be placed in separate leaderboards.

Input

Though the bots are different and rely on entirely different strategies, every bot has access to the same information. Every turn, the bots will be prompted with a list of command-line arguments. Below is a general format:

./Traffic_Troubles Your_bot.extension S1 S2 S3 S4 S5 S6 S7 S8 S9 N a,b,c a,b,c ...

S1 through S9 are binary digits that represent what direction traffic may flow through the corresponding stoplight. If the value is 1, traffic flows horizontally through this stoplight. If the value is 0, traffic flows vertically. Hence, a car approaching intersection 1 from the east will stop moving if the value of S1 is a 0, and continue moving along if that value is a 1.

The following argument is N. This represents the number of cars currently active on the board.

There then follows N descriptions of cars in the form a,b,c. Here, a is the character of the endpoint that a car originated, b is its destination, and c is the number of spaces it has moved. A car that has just been put on endpoint a has moved 0 spaces, and would thusly be described as a,j,0. On the other hand, a car approaching intersection 6 from the west would be described as f,g,11.

On the first turn, every stoplight has value 0, and no cars exist on the board (N == 0).

//SANDBOX NOTE: This input seems pretty messy... Any ideas?

The Traffic Engineer

Traffic Engineers aim to minimize public_unhappiness by changing the values of the stoplights to allow for traffic to continue through.

You may specify the values of up to three stoplights per turn. Every turn your bot is called, you must provide up to 3 space-separated output pairs of the form a,b where a is the number of the spotlight you want to change, and b will be a binary digit representing the desired value of the stoplight. Invalid output will count as a change to the stoplights, but be ignored. You may choose to output any number of changes less than or equal to 3.

//SANDBOX NOTE: The value of 3 is subject to change.

The Driver

Drivers aim to maximize public_unhappiness by choosing entry points for cars.

Every turn, you may output up to six distinct entry points for cars in the form X Y Z .... If a car already exists on that entry point and is not moving in the opposite direction that output will be ignored. You may specify any number of entry points less than or equal to 6.

//SANDBOX NOTE: The number 6 is subject to change

The Sequence of Events

1. Both bots are called at roughly the same time with access to the exact same information.

2. Cars are added to the entry points and the value of stoplights are changed.

3. Cars move, and public_unhappiness is incremented accordingly.

4. Any car that has surpassed its respective exit point is removed from play.

//SANDBOX NOTE: Perhaps the Traffic Engineer should be able to view where the Driver put cars and adjust accordingly. Thoughts?

Rules

1. Your bot is given 1 second to respond.

2. You may not tailor your bot to act specifically against another bot.

3. Please provide a method for compiling your bot and a command-line method for running your bot.

4. The header of your answer should be in this format:

   [Language-name] - [Traffic Engineer/Driver] - [Bot-name]

5. Standard Loopholes are disallowed.

//SANDBOX NOTE: If this idea is received well (~4-6 upvotes on the sandbox) I will build the controller. For now, it's just an idea. If you wish to run/improve on this KotH, you are welcome to.

Answer 29

8-FTU - Retrofit UTF-8 to any pre-1988 language

code-golf

The design of Unicode started in 1987 and was first published in 1988. UTF-8 itself was designed in 1992 and first presented in 1993. Your goal is to retrofit the UTF-8 encoding of Unicode to any language that was in existence on 31 December 1987. You can't use any features that were added to the language after this date.

Your program will take a text input (byte encoded characters, possibly with errors) and up to two integers. Your program must accept any value at any byte position (00-FF).

Task 1 - Validate the input

Your program will print one of TRUE/FALSE, True/False or true/false depending on whether the text is valid UTF-8 or not, and exit if the format is not valid. See below for validation rules. There are also many online resources that cover the format that you can reference.

Task 2 - Count the code points

If your program didn't exit at the end of Task 1, it will print the number of Unicode code points encoded within the text.

Task 3 - Substring

Using the two integer inputs your program will find and output the matching substring. The first integer will be the starting position, 0 will be the start of the string. If the starting position is after the end of the string, return an empty string. The second integer will be the length of the substring in Unicode code points. If the length is omitted or goes past the end of the string return all the text from the start position to the end of the string. You do not need to program for negative numbers, although you can if you want to.

Tasks 1 & 2 must be printed to standard output. If printing the output of Task 3 would have undesirable consequences (e.g. characters interpreted as control codes) you may return the text instead. You don't have to worry about how the text will display, your code will be taken by DeLorean or TARDIS (depending on country) to 1987 or earlier where a team of engineers will work on displaying it correctly!

Valid encodings

  Code points        Byte encoding
---------------    -----------------
U+0000 - U+007F    Standard 7-bit ASCII (00 - 7F)
U+0080 - U+07FF    Two bytes per code point (C2 80 - DF BF)
U+0800 - U+D7FF    Three bytes per code point (E0 A0 00 - ED 9F BF)
U+D800 - U+DFFF    High and low surrogate pairs, invalid in UTF-8 (ED A0 80 - ED BF BF)
U+E000 - U+FFFF    Three bytes per code point (EE 80 80 - EF BF BF)
U+010000 - U+10FFFF    Four bytes per code point (F0 80 80 80 - F4 8F BF BF)

Byte table

• 00 - 7F: Standard 7-bit ASCII
• 80 - BF: Continuation bytes
• C0 - C1: Invalid - Task 1 must print one of the false messages if either of these bytes are present
• C2 - DF: Start of two-byte code
• E0 - EF: Start of three-byte code. ED codes where the next byte is one of A0-BF are invalid because they encode surrogate pairs
• F0 - F4: Start of four-byte code. Note: not all sequences starting with F4 are valid. You need to test for these too
• F5 - FF: Invalid - Task 1 must print one of the false messages if any of these bytes are present

The remainder of a multi-byte code must only be continuation bytes until the length is reached. E.g. E4 85 B9 is valid because E4 marks the start of a three byte code, there are exactly three bytes and 85 and B9 are both within the range 80-BF. A continuation byte must not appear except as part of a multi-byte sequence, which must start with C2-F4. Long encodings are not allowed. E.g. "A" is 41, which could also be encoded as C1 81 or E0 81 81. These longer sequences are invalid because there is a shorter, valid sequence.

You don't need to worry about the BOM code point U+FEFF (EF BB BF). Treat it as any other character even if it appears within the text.

Example input (to be expanded)

C3 87 61 20 76 61 3F 0 2 (Ça va?, 7 bytes, 6 code points)

Outputs:

True
6
Ça

C3 87 61 20 76 61 3F 2 (Ça va?, 7 bytes, 6 code points)

Outputs:

True
6
 va?

C1 87 61 20 76 61 3F 0 2 (Ga va?, 7 bytes (overlong error), 6 code points)

Outputs:

False

As mentioned above, the output for Task 3 may be returned as a string instead of printing it.

Scoring

Either shortest code in bytes or a bonus awarded for retrofitting an older language. Maybe bytes minus the number of months before January 1988, assuming a release date of December if not otherwise specified?

Answer 30

KotHgress

king-of-the-hill

As everyone knows, the only way to make sure your voice is heard among a group of people is to shout louder than everyone else. This is especially true in KotHgress, a bureaucratic committee of PPCG bots.

The KotHgress Register is a 1D string, at least 100 characters long, containing the minutes of each committee meeting. The only problem is that all the committee members talk at the same time, often shouting over each other, so that (like a typical committee), nothing ever gets done. However, since this is a committee of bots, efficiency is prized almost as much as volume.

Rules

The Register for each meeting is a string of length max(100, N_bot * 4). At the beginning of each meeting, a committee member bot is pseudorandomly assigned an ascii character to be its voice, and 3 starting positions for its voice in the Register (initial index of 1), with each bot's positions having the same sum - for example, [1,4,100] and [5, 25, 75] could be starting positions.

Each turn, a bot receives 20 points times the number of times its voice appears in the Register. The bot can spend any amount of its points to bid on positions in which to place its voice. A bot that does not spend all its points banks any remaining points towards its score for the round; points do not carry over to following rounds.

Once all bids have been collected, each position is overwritten with the voice of the highest bidder, with ties for high bid causing no change in that position's current character. Note: a bot that is outbid for a position it already occupies loses that position.

Then, each bot accumulates score equal to the combined rank of its voice characters in the Register (for example, "ABABB" would score 4 for "A" at rank 1 and 3, and 11 for "B" at rank 2, 4, and 5), and the Register is sent as input to each member for them to choose their next bids.

After 100 turns, the meeting is over, and the bot with the highest accumulated score wins the meeting.

Input

Each turn, bot will receive four inputs, in this order:

1. a single character which is its voice
2. a positive integer indicating its current (banked) score
3. a positive integer indicating the number of points it collected this turn
4. a string of length max(100, N_bot * 4), the Register

Output

The bot should output a string consisting of integer pairs, separated like so: "pos0 bid0|pos1 bid1|...|posM bidM". Banked points will be automatically calculated from the output: banked_points = turn_points - sum(bids).

Invalid output, including sum(bids) > turn_points, will cause your bot to lose its turn (not banking any points).

Meta-notes

• Controller construction is in progress.
• I expect it to be language-agnostic (using a similar setup to aBOTcalypse). Bots will be allowed one storage file for memory purposes.