Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

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Answer 1

Sum of consecutive nth powers code-golf math integer

Answer 2

How many ways to cut a number into an equation?

Answer 3

Play a game of memory

Answer 4

Numbers with distinct decimal digits

Answer 5

Implement Subleq

Answer 6

Do you win a Numeric Mahjong?

Answer 7

I (rev)?(pal)? the source code, you (rev)?(pal)? the input!

Answer 8

Complete an equivalence relation

In set theory, a relation from a set \$A\$ to a set \$B\$ is a set of pairs of elements from \$A\$ and \$B\$. For example, \$\{(1, 5), (1, 6), (2, 4), (3, 5)\}\$ is a relation from the set \$\{1, 2, 3\}\$ to the set \$\{4, 5, 6\}\$.

A relation \$R\$ from a set \$A\$ to itself is an equivalence relation iff:

• It is reflexive: For all elements of \$A\$, \$(a, a)\$ is in \$R\$.
• It is symmetric: If a pair \$(a, b)\$ is in \$R\$, then so is \$(b, a)\$.
• It is transitive: If the pairs \$(a, b)\$ and \$(b, c)\$ are in \$R\$, then so is \$(a, c)\$.

For example, \$\{(1, 1), (1, 2), (2, 1), (2, 2), (3, 3)\}\$ is an equivalence relation on the set \$\{1, 2, 3\}\$.

Your challenge is to, given a relation from a set to itself, add as few pairs of elements as possible to transform it into an equivalence relation.

Worked example

If we start with the relation \$\{(1, 2), (3, 2), (4, 4)\}\$, then:

Firstly, the relation must be reflexive, so all pairs of elements \$(a, a)\$ must be added, resulting in \$\{(1, 2), (3, 2), (4, 4), (1, 1), (2, 2), (3, 3)\}\$.

Next, the relation must be symmetric, so we need to add the inverses of \$(1, 2)\$ and \$(3, 2)\$, resulting in \$\{(1, 2), (3, 2), (4, 4), (1, 1), (2, 2), (3, 3), (2, 1), (2, 3)\}\$.

Finally, the relation must be transitive. Since \$(1, 2)\$ and \$(2, 3)\$ are in the relation, so must be \$(1, 3)\$, and likewise \$(3, 1)\$ must also be in the relation. Adding these results in \$\{(1, 2), (3, 2), (4, 4), (1, 1), (2, 2), (3, 3), (2, 1), (2, 3), (1, 3), (3, 1)\}\$, and this is an equivalence relation.

Input/output is can be lists of pairs of positive integers, or an adjacency matrix. You can optionally take the domain of the relation (i.e. all unique values in it). The order in which you output the pairs does not matter, and you can assume the input will be nonempty.

Testcases

{(1, 1)} -> {(1, 1)}
{(1, 2)} -> {(1, 2), (1, 1), (2, 2), (2, 1)}
{(1, 2), (3, 4)} -> {(1, 2), (1, 1), (2, 2), (2, 1), (3, 4), (3, 3), (4, 4), (4, 3)}
{(1, 2), (1, 3)} -> {(1, 2), (1, 3), (1, 1), (2, 2), (3, 3), (2, 1), (3, 1), (2, 3), (3, 2)}
{(1, 1), (2, 2), (3, 3)} -> {(1, 1), (2, 2), (3, 3)}
{(1, 1), (2, 2), (3, 4)} -> {(1, 1), (2, 2), (3, 3), (3, 4), (4, 3)}
{(1, 2), (3, 2), (4, 1)} -> {(1, 1), (2, 2), (3, 3), (4, 4), (1, 2), (1, 3), (1, 4), (2, 1), (2, 3), (2, 4), (3, 1), (3, 2), (3, 4), (4, 1), (4, 2), (4, 3)}
{(8, 19), (4, 12), (9, 31), (4, 18)} -> {(8, 8), (8, 19), (19, 8), (19, 19), (4, 4), (4, 12), (4, 18), (12, 4), (12, 12), (12, 18), (18, 4), (18, 12), (18, 18), (9, 9), (9, 31), (31, 9), (31, 31)}
{(8, 7), (2, 7), (14, 3), (3, 16)} -> {(2, 2), (2, 7), (2, 8), (7, 2), (7, 7), (7, 8), (8, 2), (8, 7), (8, 8), (3, 3), (3, 14), (3, 16), (14, 3), (14, 14), (14, 16), (16, 3), (16, 14), (16, 16)}
{(1, 1), (1, 2)} -> {(1, 1), (1, 2), (2, 1), (2, 2)}

Answer 9

The multiples are missing

code-golf integer sequence

Answer 10

compression? decision-problem? code-challenge?

Golfy Fairy Chess Notation + Validation

Step 1:

Design an encoding for fairy chess piece movement which encodes all of the following information:

• Where a piece can move (INCLUDING arbitrary length movement)*
• Whether those movements are "jumping" or not
• Whether those movements are "capturing" or not**

You don't need to handle non-moving, royalty, special case movement (such as first move double-movement), or any other special stuff like that.

Step 2:

Write a program which, when given (A):

• a chess position***
• a starting square
• an ending square

all in any reasonable format of your choice, as well as (B):

• a description of a fairy chess piece's movement capabilities in the notation you designed in step 1

will output whether the movement on the board (A) is valid for that fairy chess piece (B)

Additional spec clarification

You may assume

• All pieces other than the piece being moved are pawns
• The fairy chess piece is the piece that will be moved
• The fairy chess piece movement will be defined such that it could theoretically make a move, given the right board arrangement (i.e. no 'non-movers')
• Movement will be entirely within the board
• Board will be square and at least 2x2 in size
• Piece will not attempt to capture its own teammates
• Piece will not attempt to move to its own square, and you don't need to worry about whether the notation implies it should/shouldn't be able to.

You may not assume an 8x8 board.

Scoring:****

\$(\text{bytes in program})\times(\text{average bytes to represent each piece in (list of fairy chess pieces which will be provided)})\$

Lowest score wins

Optional challenge: try and make the format human legible! :-)

META:

*I will be sure to clarify in the question body how exactly this works; but basically i want to be able to include things like rook/bishop/queen/knightrider without having to assume a maximum movement distance

**I'll also be clear that pieces can only capture at the end of their move, so no multicapture or capture and then move / en passant nonsense :P

***I don't know how to explain, but this doesnt have to include which pieces are what. just where the pieces are and whether each piece is on your team or not, or something similarly simple

****Ideally, score would be based on both short notation as well as a short decoding program, but I'm not sure the exact balance yet. feel free to tell me this is a bad idea / throw your algo of choice at me, but i'll be studying other compression challenges as well

Answer 11

Find the k-th largest number

Given the string representation of three sorted lists, get the k-th largest number.

The string representation has such form:

1 3 5 7 11 120 9988
23 68 99 111
107 131 888

aka. lists are separated by newline \n and numbers in one list are separated by space.

Length of each list, length of the string and k are directly given, but access to the string costs. You can fetch from a given position. Least fetches wins.

Your solution should handle all possible inputs well, but only optimize score for average cases.

This is an example solution. It solves the problem with an awful score, but you can also use lib here. Write the lib if it's absent in your language.

---

Sorted lists in test cases will be generated in this way:

• Generate 1 million (1'000'000) integers uniformly in \$\left[0, 2^{31}-1\right]\$. Duplicates will likely appear.
• Sort them.

[Not decided yet] It's fine if your code is only optimized for three 1M length arrays and fallback to worst solution for other input.

Answer 12

Make Code Printing X without X

code-golf code-generation

The challenge is simple: write a program which takes in some string \$n\$ consisting of only uppercase and lowercase letters, and outputs the code for a program (in the same language) which takes in no input and outputs \$n\$. However, the code your program generates must not have any of the characters of \$n\$. For example, if your program was in Python, if the input was "Lit", your output could not be print("Lit"), because that contains L, i, and t. One valid output would be, for example, x=lambda:'\114\151\164'.

Some notes:

• Uppercase and lowercase characters are treated as distinct -- e.g. if the input string contains A, your generated code can still contain the character a.
• Your generated code follows the same restrictions as a standard code golf answer -- e.g. it can be code which defines an anonymous function returning the string, but it cannot work by saving the string into a variable.
• Your submission is scored by the length of the generating code, not the generated code. In addition, there are no restrictions on the source of the generating program, only the generated.

Standard loopholes are forbidden. As this is code-golf, shortest program wins.

Questions

I don't know what to call this challenge.

Answer 13

Is it a valid crossword grid?

In crossword terminology, the grid is the region into which the crossword answers are inserted, consisting of white and black squares. The crossword answers, called entries, are inserted into contiguous sequences of white squares in a row or column, separated by black squares.

For British (and Commonwealth) crosswords, the grids usually follow a specific set of rules:

• They should have 180 degree rotational symmetry (if there is a black square in the xth row and yth column, there should be a black square in the xth-to-last row and y th-to-last column).
• No entries may be exactly two squares long.
• All white squares must be joined in a single region.
• No row/column can be completely filled with black squares.
• Each two-by-two square must contain at least one white square.
• Each two-by-three rectangle must contain at least one black square.

For n=3 there is only one valid grid (I'm using . for white squares and # for black squares):

...
.#.
...

For n=4 there are no valid grids, although British crosswords usually use odd n anyway.

Here are some examples of valid grids for n=5:

.....  .....  #.#.#  ###.#
.#.#.  .###.  .....  #....
.....  .....  #.#.#  #.#.#
.#.#.  .###.  .....  ....#
.....  .....  #.#.#  #.###

Here are two examples of valid grids for n=6:

......  ......
.##.#.  .##.#.
.#....  ....#.
....#.  .#....
.#.##.  .#.##.
......  ......

Input may be in the form of an array of any two byte-sized values and output can be any two distinct values of your choice or any of your language's truthy or falsy values respectively.

This is code-golf, so the shortest program or function that breaks no standard loopholes wins!

Answer 14

Befunge Comment Outline Creator

Answer 15

Minecraft XP Orb Amounts

Answer 16

Intersections in a Circular Scrambled Word

Given a word W and a scrambled version of it S as input, you are required to return the number of intersections S will have when organized in a circular arrangement.

Example

Let W be VICTORY and S be VICYTRO. After transforming the scrambled word in its circular form and forming the original word by adding segments between the characters, we have the following diagram:

As we can see, for this particular example, the expected output is 2 interceptions.

Specs

• Input will consist only of [A-Z] characters.
• It is irrelevant how you set up the circular word (clockwise, counterclockwise, if the characters are evenly spaced from one another or not), just be consistent.
• Input is flexible, read it however you see fit for you.
• Standard loopholes are not allowed.

Test Cases

Format: 
W , S  --> output

VICTORY, VICYTRO --> 2
# To be added more 

This is code-golf, so shortest answers in bytes wins!

Meta

Is the challenge interesting? Is there anything unclear? I am not a native English speaker, so I welcome any corrections on the wording of the challenge.

I will later add more test cases. Also, what is the general consensus here where there are multiple correct answers? Because when I add words with repeated letters, depending on the "path" you choose when forming the circular word, it will affect the number of intersections. (I'll update the specs section as well when I introduce these special cases).

Lastly, I didn't give much thought on my second point in the specs section, maybe it's wrong... I'll observe more cases later.

Pretty much any feedback is appreciated!

Answer 17

Seat gangs as far as possible

Answer 18

Calculate a struct size

In C and C++, the size of a structure depends not only on the sizes of its members but also their alignment requirements.

This problem will assume a simple case in which each structure is made up of primitive types that have a size that is a power of two and an alignment that equals their size.

Given a list of the types in a structure, please output the resulting size of the structure.

Here is an example structure:

struct {
  char c[5];
  int i, j;
  short s[3];
}

Input in any of the following formats is acceptable:

• A list of the sizes of the individual types that make up the structure; for the above that would be [1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 4, 4, 2, 2]
• A list giving the lengths of each array and the sizes of its elements, which for the above would be [[5, 1], [1, 4], [1, 4], [3, 2]]
• A list giving the size and alignment of each variable, which for the above would be [[5, 1], [4, 4], [4, 4], [6, 2]]

(The third format indirectly supports nested structures but this can be emulated for the other formats by replacing them with an array of the same size and alignment.)

The size of the above structure is 24. Here is how it is calculated:

1. Each of the 5 chars consumes 1 byte each, making 5.
2. Each int requires an alignment of 4, so there are three bytes of padding before the first of them. The total size is now 16.
3. Each of the 3 shorts consume 2 bytes each. The total size is now 22.
4. The entire structure has an alignment of the largest alignment of any member, which in this case is 4, so the size must be rounded up to the next multiple of 4, which is 24.

Visually:

c[0] c[1] c[2] c[3]
c[4] ..............
i__________________
j__________________
s[0]_____ s[1]_____
s[2]_____ .........

This is code-golf, so the shortest program or function that breaks no standard loopholes wins!

Answer 19

Golf Transmission

As in, the 5 speed transmission from the original VW Golf GTI.

Print the transmission pattern in as few bytes as possible.

1  3  5
|  |  | 
|--|--|
|  |  |
2  4  R

code-golfkolmogorov-complexity

Answer 20

Derive an MIU string

The MU puzzle in Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach involves a simple formal system called "MIU". It works as follows:

• MI is an MIU-string
• If xI is an MIU-string, then so is xIU.
• If Mx is an MIU-string, then so is Mxx.
• If xIIIy is an MIU-string, then so is xUy.
• If xUUy is an MIU-string, then so is xy.

Your task, given an MIU-string, is to output a derivation of that string starting with MI and ending with the input string.

You can assume that the input is in fact a valid MIU-string and not something illegal like MCMLXVIII or (spoiler) MU.

Instead of taking input as strings of MIU, you can choose to take input as arbitrary precision integers using the digits 3 for M, 1 for I and 0 for U. In that case your output would start with 31, which represents MI.

Example:

MI
MII
MIIII
MUI
MUIU
MUIUUIU
MUIIU

This is code-golf, so the shortest program or function that breaks no standard loopholes wins.

Answer 21

Just another traffic jam!

Answer 22

Longest irreducible quine

code-bowlingquine

---

Write an irreducible proper quine, i.e. a program that prints its own source code, which can't be reduced by removing characters to a shorter program with the same constraints.

Eg. the python quine:

var='var=%r;print(var%%var)';print(var%var)

can be reduced to the quine

v='v=%r;print(v%%v)';print(v%v)

thus it is not irreducible, although the program below is.

Standard Loopholes apply, this and this in particular.
The longest answer wins.

Answer 23

Cyclically Sort a List

Given a list of Integers greater than zero, Sort each of the unique values in ascending order, then repeat the process on the remaining duplicate values and append.

Example:

[1,5,2,2,8,3,5,2,9] ==> [1,2,3,5,8,9,2,5,2]

code-golfsorting

Answer 24

Huffman Decoding

Write a programm which takes two strings as input and prints a text.

---

The first argument is a Huffman Tree, serialized in the following format:

• every ascii character except ~ is always a leaf, if ~ is the first characater it is also a leaf.
• <tree0><tree1>~ is a tree where <tree0> is the left subtree and <tree1> is the right subtree.

Example: ab~cde~~~ generates this tree:

 ┌─┴─┐
┌┴┐ ┌┴─┐
a b c ┌┴┐
      d e

where a would have the key 00, b 01, c 10, d 110 and e the key 111.

---

The second argument is a text that has been compressed with with the Huffman code that is defined by the first parameter. This bit-string can contain any bit sequence (also null-bytes and non-printable characters) and is not byte aligned, therefore it has been encoded with a variation of the standard Base64 encoding:

• the characters used for the encoding are the standard base64 characters: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789+/
• the bitstring is broken up into 6-bit chunks and mapped to this characters
• if the last chunk is smaller than 6 bits, a character with this prefix is used, and padding characters are added to the string:
• - : the last chunk was five bits long
• = : the last chunk was four bits long
• =- : the last chunk was three bits long
• == : the last chunk was two bits long
• ==- : the last chunk was one bit long

Example:

bits:       1 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 1
chunks:    |1 1 1 1 0 1|1 0 1 0 0 1|1 1 0 1 0 1|0 0 0 1 1 0|1[0 0 0 0 0]|
characters:       9           p           1           G           g
base64:     9p1Gg==-

---

Your programm has to decode the text encoded in the second parameter and print it to stdout.

You have to provide your source code encoded in the way described above. The length of your encoded source code + the length of your serialized huffman tree will be the winning criterion.

TODO: example input

Answer 25

Polygon prefixes

Polygons are named after the number of sides that they have. A pentagon has 5 sides, an octagon has 8 sides. But how are they named? What's the name for a 248-sided polygon?

All polygons are suffixed with -gon. There are specific prefixes for each polygon depending on the number of sides. Here are the prefixes for the lower numbers:

3 - tri
4 - tetra
5 - penta
6 - hexa
7 - hepta
8 - octa
9 - nona
10 - deca
11 - undeca
12 - dodeca
13 - triskaideca
14 - tetradeca
15 - pentadeca
16 - hexadeca
17 - heptadeca
18 - octadeca
19 - nonadeca
20 - icosa

Polygons with 21 to 99 sides have a different system. Take the prefix for the tens digit (found on the left column), the ones digit (right column below), and then stick a "kai" between them to get (tens)(ones)gon.

20 - icosi       | 1 - hena
30 - triaconta   | 2 - di
40 - tetraconta  | 3 - tri
50 - pentaconta  | 4 - tetra
60 - hexaconta   | 5 - penta
70 - heptaconta  | 6 - hexa
80 - octaconta   | 7 - hepta
90 - nonaconta   | 8 - octa
                 | 9 - nona

The 3-digit sided polygons are named in a similar fashion. A 100-sided polygon is called a hectogon. Take the hundreds digit, find it on the column for ones digits, then stick a "hecta" to its right. Now number off the tens and ones like above: (hundreds)hecta(tens)(ones)gon. If the hundreds place digit is a 1, don't put the prefix behind "hecta".

So, given an integer (3 <= n <= 999), return the name of an n-sided polygon. n-gon is not a valid answer :P

As with all code golf, shortest code wins.

---

Is the description good? Would it be harder if I instead asked for the number of sides, given a name?

Answer 26

Code golfing problem: Surface classification

The task: Given a surface-word reply with the classification of what surface it is.

Example 1: Input: aba'b' ----> Output: 1T

Example 2: Input: aabcb'c' ----> Output: 3P

Bounds on the problem: Since there are only 26 letters, there will never be more than that many labels. Additionally output should be in the form S,nT,mP for n,m positive integers.

Background: In the study of algebraic topology students are often presented with diagrams such as the one below. The represent instructions for how to assemble a surface. The assembly is prescribed as: if there are two edges labeled with the letter x then glue them together so that the arrows point the same direction. To make our job easy, topologists have discovered an algorithmic way to classify surfaces using 'words' assembled from these 'plane gluing-diagrams'.

Choosing a corner arbitrarily (top right) and orientation (ccw) we read off the labels on the edges where an inverse appears wherever the arrow points against the orientation. In this case the 'word' that represents this plane model is given as abab.

A surface word is a string that contains the letters a,b,...,@ up to some letter @ and each letter is contained in it exactly twice. In the two occurrences of each letter: 0, 1, or 2 of them may be postfixed by a ' which I am considering using to represent 'inverse' (opposite orientation).

If in a surface word all letters appear twice: once without the ' and once with it (f.ex. ba'b'a) then we say that the surface the word represents is orientable. If a surface is orientable then it is necessarily the direct sum of n Tori for some non-negative integer n. If this condition doesn't hold (like in aab'b) then the surface represented is non-orientable: in this case it is the direct sum of m Projective Planes for some positive integer m.

Once you have found out if the reduced word is orientable or not, the final answer is given as follows. If orientable and number of unique letters in the reduced word is 1 then output should be S. Otherwise if the number of unique letters in an orientable word is n (it will be even) then the output should be sT where s = n/2. If the word is non-orientable then the output should be mP where m is the number of distinct letters in the reduced word.

The goal is to take as input some surface word, reduce it via reduction rules 1-6 and then classify it as a sphere, some number of connected tori, or some number of connected projective planes. Here are the 6 reduction rules where ~ represents 'reduces to':

Let M,A,B,C,D be surface words, x be a single letter, and juxtaposition represents concatenation:

1. Cycle Rule: If M = AB then M ~ BA
2. Flip Rule: M ~ M'
3. Sphere Rule: Axx'B ~ AB
4. Block Rule: ABC ~ ADC if B is a surface word and B ~ D by 1 or 2
5. Cylinder Rule: If M = AxBCx'D, then M ~ AxCBx'D
6. Möbius Rule: If M = AxBxC then M ~ AxxB'C ~ AB'xxC

I am looking for input on:

• should this be code-golf or programming-challenge?
• how would scoring work?
• ???

If I feel satisfied with the question in a few days I'll post it to the site.

Answer 27

Fastest Code: checking if interval pairs overlap

Given an unsorted input of many interval pairs (50+), write the fastest algorithm to determine if they do not overlap.

An interval pair is said to overlap if interval x and interval y are overlapping.

Example input 1:
interval x , interval y

10-25, 50-60
10-15, 25-60

Output:
Can be in any true false format.

false (They overlap)

reasoning:

a.x overlaps b.x
a.y overlaps b.y

Example input 2:

10-25, 50-60
20-30, 25-30

Output:

true (they do not overlap)

reasoning:

a.x overlaps b.x
a.y does not overlap b.y

Scoring:

[not sure...]
brute force gives a worst case n^2 runtime

Answer 28

Business Card Ray Tracer

I have no idea how to create a good code golf question!

See this description of a ray tracer with source code that fits on a business card. The author stopped when the code size was 1337 bytes.

http://fabiensanglard.net/rayTracing_back_of_business_card/index.php

Achieving identical output, optimise for minimum code size. Execution time is not relevant.

Answer 29

Countdown: Federal Holidays in the United States

Inspired by this question:

Christmas Countdown

Write a program or script that will countdown to the nearest U.S. federal holiday, at any given time, and will switch the display to an appropriate greeting during each holiday.

The following holidays must be tracked, and announced:

Holiday                         Date                    Greeting
==========================================================================================
New Year's Day                  Jan. 1                  Happy New Year!
Martin Luther King, Jr. Day     3rd Mon. in Jan.        Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day!
President's Day                 3rd Mon. in Feb.        Happy President's Day!
Memorial Day                    Last Mon. in May        Happy Memorial Day!
Independence Day                Jul. 4                  Happy Independence Day!
Labor Day                       First Mon. in Sept.     Happy Labor Day!
Columbus Day                    2nd Mon. in Oct.        Happy Columbus Day!
Veterans Day                    Nov. 11                 Happy Veterans Day!
Thanksgiving                    4th Thu. in Nov.        Happy Thanksgiving!
Christmas                       Dec. 25                 Merry Christmas!

The strings listed under "Holiday" and "Greeting" are all free. Shortcuts like "Merry X-mas!" or "Happy 4th of July" will count against you - the full and proper holiday names are free, so there's no good reason not to use them.

The following strings are also free, only when used as a label for time units or in advertising the next upcoming holiday:

days
hours
minutes
seconds
milliseconds
until
time

On any given non-holiday, the program must show a count-down timer which displays time remaining at least down to the second, and updates the display with an accurate value (according to the system clock) at least once per second. Time remaining until a holiday must be counted as the time until midnight (00:00:00) on that day.

How the days, hours, minutes, and seconds (and milliseconds, if you choose) are displayed is up to you, so long as all mandatory items are present and it is clear which numbers represent which value. Again, the strings defining units of time are free so there's no really good reason not to use them. (Though you won't be penalized for not using these strings, so long as it is still unambiguous which time units are which.) The program should also make apparent which holiday is being counted down towards.

On any given holiday, the program must cease displaying the countdown timer and instead display the appropriate greeting for that holiday from 00:00:00 until 23:59:59.

After a holiday is over, at 00:00:00 the next day, the holiday greeting must go away and be replaced with the countdown timer for the next holiday.

Answers must include:

• Name of language
• Score (length of golfed code, minus free characters)
• Golfed code
• Total length of golfed code
• Total number of free characters used
• Un-golfed code, with descriptive comments

The program must be capable of running accurately (according to the system clock) at any time, and must be able to run indefinitely. The only limitations to this should be those imposed by the host computer or the nature of the programming language.

code-golf holidays

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Are there any additions/deletions/modifications that should be made to these rules?

I'm considering changing some of the greetings, but I'm not quite sure what to.

• "Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day!" is just a mouthful and feels awkward, but shortening it to "Happy MLK Day" feels weird too - any other suggestions?
• I'm not quite sure "Memorial Day" should really be preceded by "Happy" - thoughts?
• Any others?

Answer 30

Golf a random Human Genome fragment with non-random features

A totally random genome fragment is easy enough: just spit out the letters ATCG in random order, and you're done. So let's try something a little less random and more useful to science.

Your program will:

• Accept an argument from the user for number of base pairs (20bp-10000bp must be supported, more if you wish)

• Accept an argument from the user for GC content. This indicates how frequently the generated sequence should contain the G and C bases as a percentage of total sequence length.

• Include at least one complete gene in every request of 500bp or more, where a gene is defined as an otherwise random sequence that begins with a start codon triplet (ATG) and ends with the first stop codon triplet it encounters (TAG, TGA, or TAA). The distance between the start codon and the stop codon does not have to be a multiple of 3.

• Vary gene content (the portion of the fragment that is "gene", inclusive of the gene's start and stop codons) linearly with respect to GC content (when sequence >= 500bp). At the extremes, when GC content is 0%, gene content is 10%; when GC content is 100%, gene content is 60%.

• Output a single-strand sequence that complies with the above specs and the user's given parameters. (i.e. a single row of letters will suffice since it is trivial to deduce the complementary strand of the DNA given the sequence of one strand)

• Calculate the actual GC content %, actual number of genes, and actual gene content % in the resulting fragment, and output a status line below the sequence conforming to the example format below. Percentages may be rounded to one decimal place. Actual values may deviate by +/- 3% from the expected outcome based on user's input.

  GC content: 42.1% | Genes: 3 | Gene content: 32.1%

Your program will not:

• Use any Internet, library, or built-in gene sequence generation functions or databases. Roll your own.

Sufficient randomness:

• For the purposes of this challenge, any built-in random/pseudo-random number generator function, GUID generator, well-seeded cryptographic hash function, etc. is considered an acceptable source of randomness.

What-ifs:

• What if another start codon occurs before the stop codon? E.g. ATGXXXATGXXXXXXXXXXXXTAG. This is acceptable, but the "gene" length in this case is calculated from the most proximal start codon to the stop codon.
• What if another stop codon occurs after a stop codon? E.g. ATGXXXXXXXXXXXXXTAGXXXXXXTAG This is also acceptable, but likewise the "gene" length is calculated from the start to the most proximal stop.
• What if both of these things happen? E.g. ATGXXXATGXXXXXXXXXXXXTAGXXXTGA. Here again, the "most proximal" principle applies and the gene content is demarcated by the innermost start and the innermost stop.
• Do "orphaned" start and stop codons that do not demarcate a gene count as gene content? No.

This challenge is code golf, so shortest valid code wins.

Post example output from a 500-bp request with GC content between 35% and 65%, and have fun!