# Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

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

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
• 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 needs more feedback, but it's been ignored, you can ask for feedback in The Nineteenth Byte. It's not only allowed, but highly recommended!

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

The sandbox works best if you sort posts by active.

To add an inline tag to a proposal use shortcut link syntax with a prefix: [tag:king-of-the-hill]. To search for posts with a certain tag, include the name in quotes: "king-of-the-hill".

Get the Sandbox Viewer to view the sandbox more easily!

## Shortest path to the exit:

• Given a n*n grid of 3 symbolic characters {'.','#',*} , where n is inputted, the dot is a safe spot to move from/to, # is a dragon who blows fire and spits magma, * is the outlet . Define (if it can be) the shortest path to take from the extreme upper/right to the star character that a moving point can take where:

m is an integer m < n given by user-input or a function dimention with n, that generates obstacles # at the dynamic point m modulus n from the starting point, the last # point so far is replaced by an exit *, if no such path exists print 0 or a negative amount or undifined/null anything witch doesnt throw an error.

Testcases:

input: 7,3
output:9


why? the input generates this grid

...#...
#...#..
.#...#.
..#...#
...#...
#...*..


The shortest path is marked as _

__.#...
#__.#..
.#__.#.
..#__.#
...#_..
#..._..


More TODO ...

Hints/notes

• Solution is cyclic

• No solutions when m+1 divides n or n-1 . (to verify)

• Like I said in your other challenge, please use proper English grammar and spelling.
– Nic
May 10 '16 at 21:52
• This looks like a standard path-finding, which we've already done. Making every mth place also make an obstacle doesn't make it sufficiently different IMO May 10 '16 at 21:52
• @NathanMerrill how is so ? obstacles are systematically generated but not arbitrarily May 10 '16 at 22:04
• Hmmm...I guess that does allow for optimizations. Yeah, this would work for a code-golf. You should define what happens if there is no solution, or guarantee that there will always be a solution. May 10 '16 at 23:05
• The text says that the start is the extreme upper/right, but the example seems to start from the upper left. Do you mean upper left? Also the slash makes it look like upper or right, rather than referring to a corner, which doesn't seem consistent with the example. May 11 '16 at 0:49
• @trichoplax this is not really a big issue, up/right to down/left or up/left do down/right. May 11 '16 at 6:47
• @Agawa001 It's no issue either way - I'm just helping get it clear which one you want before the challenge goes live May 11 '16 at 14:30
• @trichoplax the challenge will never get a soul to the other end anyways i m not really ready for another blizzard of downvotes May 11 '16 at 14:40
• I never know which challenges will make it to main. I just try to help clarify them until we can tell one way or the other May 11 '16 at 14:48
• I dont know why serial dvter did miss to star the 4th comment, is it because is not castigating ! May 12 '16 at 7:58
• I think you have a gross misunderstanding of what constitutes serial downvoting. Serial downvoting is when somebody goes through and downvotes a lot of posts, typically out of spite. I downvoted both this and your other sandboxed post because they are very poorly specified, and you seem to have a tenuous grasp on the English language that makes understanding these challenges impossible.
– user45941
May 13 '16 at 5:23
• that's penguins being penguins May 13 '16 at 7:46

# Simulate a DNA Computer code-golf

DNA computers are very powerful computational models, theoretically able to solve NP-complete problems such as SAT deterministically in polynomial time. Your task in this challenge is to write a program/function that simulates the behaviour of a very simple DNA computer that accepts only four different kinds of commands.

# DNA and Tubes

To make things a bit easier, we model DNA strands as non-empty words over {0,1}. So for our purpose, the following are all valid strands of DNA: 1, 010010, 01, 1100101.

Our DNA computer has access to an infinite number of (test) tubes T1,T2,T3,..., each of which contains a finite number of DNA strands. That is, Ti ⊂ {0,1}* for all i ∈ ℕ+. For example, T1 = {1,0100101,000} would be a valid tube. At the beginning of a simulation, all tubes are assumed to be empty (Ti = ∅ for all i ∈ ℕ+).

# Commands

Our computer supports four different commands: Initialize (I), Merge (M), Filter (F), and Amplify (A). In the following, let the pairwise different numbers i, j, k ∈ ℕ+ denote indices of tubes Ti, Tj and Tk. Furthermore, let n ∈ ℕ+ and b ∈ {0,1}.

## Initialize

• Description: We take all possible DNA strands of length n and put them into tube i.
• Syntax: i = I n
• Semantics: Ti ← {0,1}n
• Example: After the execution of 2 = I 3, we have T2 = {000, 001, 010, 011, 100, 101, 110, 111}.

## Merge

• Description: We mix the contents of tubes j and k and put them into tube i.
• Syntax: i = M j k
• Semantics: Ti ← Tj ∪ Tk ; Tj ← ∅ ; Tk ← ∅
• Example: If T2 = {00, 111} and T3 = {1, 010, 00}, then after the execution of 1 = M 2 3, we have T1 = {00, 111, 1, 010} and T2 = T3 = ∅.

## Filter

• Description: We remove all DNA strands from tube j whose n-th bit is not equal to b. We put the remaining strands into tube i.
• Syntax: i = F j n b
• Semantics: Ti ← Tj ∩ {0,1}n-1∘{b}∘{0,1}* ; Tj ← ∅
• Example: If T2 = {1010000, 111, 1, 0101}, then after the execution of 1 = F 2 3 1, we have T1 = {1010000, 111} and T2 = ∅

## Amplify

• Description: We put an exact copy of the contents of tube j into tube i.
• Syntax: i = A j
• Semantics: Ti ← Tj
• Example: If T2 = {1010000, 111, 1, 0101}, then after the execution of 1 = A 2, we have both T1 = {1010000, 111, 1, 0101} and T2 = {1010000, 111, 1, 0101}.

# Input

Input will be a DNA program, i.e. a sequence of these four commands, that can be read from STDIN, taken as a function argument or even be stored in a file. It's up to you whether you take them as a list or a string with some kind of separator. Also, you can choose a different separator for the parameters of the commands or encode each command as a list as long as you do so consistently. For example, instead of the command 1 = F 5 10 0, you may use [1,"F",5,10,0], 1;F/5/10/0, 1=F(5,10,0) or the like. You may assume that the input is always syntactically correct. For example input/output pairs, see below.

# Output

You have to output a truthy value iff tube 1 is not empty (i.e. T1 ≠ ∅) after the execution of the DNA program specified in the input. Otherwise output a falsey value. Note that you are not actually required to simulate the DNA program step by step - if you find a more clever way to calculate the output of a given program, feel free to use it.

# Examples

In the below examples, all commands are ;-separated and encoded as described in the "Commands" section.

Truthy

• 1 = I 20
• 2 = I 4; 1 = A 2
• 3 = I 1; 1 = M 3 9
• 1 = I 4; 2 = A 1; 3 = F 1 1 0; 4 = F 3 2 0; 5 = F 2 1 1; 5 = M 3 4; 1 = M 2 5
• 1 = I 3; 2 = A 1; 3 = A 1; 4 = A 1; 5 = F 2 1 1; 6 = F 3 2 0; 7 = F 4 3 1; 2 = M 6 7; 1 = M 2 5; 2 = A 1; 3 = A 1; 4 = F 2 1 0; 5 = F 3 2 1; 1 = M 4 5 (1)

Falsey

•  (the empty program)
• 2 = I 5
• 1 = I 2; 2 = A 1; 3 = F 1 2 0; 2 = A 3; 1 = F 2 2 1
• 1 = I 1; 2 = I 1; 3 = M 1 2
• 1 = M 2 3

# Scoring

This is , so the shortest answer (in bytes) wins.

1 In case you are interested: this example evaluates the formula (x1 ∨ ¬x2 ∨ x3) ∧ (¬x1 ∨ x2), that is, the contents of T1 after execution of the program are exactly the assignments to (x1,x2,x3) that make this formula true. One can create similar such programs for any 3SAT formula. The number of commands needed is linear in the size of the given formula.

• I think this question would benefit from being written in a more layman-friendly and less symbolic way. While I might know that Ti ⊂ {0,1}* means that each test tube is a subset of the kleene star of the set {0, 1} I don't think every user of this site will. You also use things like ℕ+ instead of saying, say, "positive integers" and so on. This is just my personal opinion, but I think if you can explain something with words instead of symbols without compromising much in terms of length, you are more likely to be understood when using words. May 11 '16 at 18:47

Inspired by this, but also different. I need help phrasing things, putting them together coherently, etc.

Also, I can't decide on what the magic numbers (size, toggles per turn, etc.) should be.

Lastly, is this even winnable?

(oh, and if anyone wants to write a nice "backstory", that'd be much appreciated)

(also I have a couple of notes to myself in there so I remember what I was doing when I come back to this later)

## Murderous Life

### Overview

The game is played on a 100-cell-wide, 300-cell-long board. It's cylinder-shaped -- patterns will wrap around the long sides, but not the short ones. Attempts to toggle cells behind the short edges will fail, and all cells along the short edge are considered dead. The center 200x100 area (the "no man's land") is the focus of the game. The farthest left 50x100 area (next to the origin) is the Police Headquarters, and is where the police can send units from. The far right is the Robber Hideout, and is where they operate from.

Your program will communicate with the controller via standard input and output. Each message is terminated with a newline (\n, ASCII code 10). The code your program must exit when it receives Control+C (ASCII code 3). It doesn't have to stop immediately -- for example, if you have to close IO handles -- but it should take less than a second. It also doesn't have to end cleanly -- throwing an error is fine. As long as you've tidied up after yourself.

Immediately, both programs print to STDOUT their name and their author's name, with a hyphen in between, followed by a newline. This signals that they are ready to begin receiving input. After that, the turns will start immediately. The turns work like this:

1. Both players are sent a string containing the current map through their STDIN. The format is detailed below.
2. The desired moves are collected from each program in no particular order.
• Note: If the moves are invalid for any reason -- they attempt to change a blocked square, too long, fail to precisely match the format, anything like that -- then the program is immediately ejected from the game, and I'll drop a comment on your post letting you know what happened.

3. All of the moves are applied at once to the board
4. One iteration of Conway's Game of Life (standard rules) is run on the map.
5. The number of living cells in the No Man's Land is tallied.

The game runs for 5000 turns, after which the average number of living squares in the No Man's Land is calculated. This is the score of both the cop and the robber. Once three answers of each type have been submitted -- aside from the example ones -- I'll begin playing the answers against each other. The scoreboard will be updated daily until at least a week after the first answers have been submitted, or if it's later, three days after the last one has. The full score of any given program is the average of all of its scores.

Each program will be played against every other exactly once. Any attempts to communicate or disrupt the other AI -- except through the board -- are banned. If your bot doesn't respond to CTRL+D or CTRL+C, it will be banned.

Note that, if you have to do some cleanup before exiting, that's fine -- the "kill switches" don't have to work instantly. They do, however, have to work quickly. They can throw an error or something like that if you like.

You can always assume you'll get valid input.

### In Cops version:

The point of the game, for the cops, is to keep the board as dead as possible. You can toggle up to 30 cells in the Police Headquarters per turn, creating or removing whatever patterns you like. At the end of the game, the Cop program with the lowest score wins.

### In Robbers version:

The point of the game, for the robbers, is to make as many cells in the No Man's Land alive as possible. You can toggle up to 20 cells in the Robber Hideout per turn, in whatever arrangement you want. At the end of the game, the Robber program with the highest score wins.

[link to the opposite side's version]

### Message format

Aside from the initial name string, all messages passed between programs will be like this:

1,4 12,0 9,125 299,6


Each pair is a coordinate pair, with the X values first and Y values second. The origin is at the top left of the board -- on the Police side of the board. The indexes are zero-based.

To be explicitly clear, the format is a space-delimited string of pairs. Each pair consists of two base-ten numbers, between 1 and 3 digits long, separated by a comma. The first number must not have a value greater than 299 or less than 0, and the second number must not have a value greater than 99 or less than 0. In addition, the first number must be between 0 and 49 (inclusive) if the player is a Cop, or between 250 and 299 (inclusive) if the player is a Robber.

I've written a basic example bot. To change what side it's on, simple change the comments on the lines indicated.

# Uncomment the part marked with the team this one should be on
#Cops
place_at = (0..47).to_a.product (0..97).to_a
glider = [[1, 0], [2, 1], [0, 2], [1, 2], [2, 2]]
toggles = 30
#Robbers
place_at = (0..47).to_a.product (0..97).to_a
glider = [[1, 0], [0, 1], [2, 2], [1, 2], [0, 2]]
toggles = 20

puts 'GliderLover-QPaysTaxes'

while gets
# We don't care what the board is like in this dumb AI.
puts toggles.times.map {
loc = place_at.sample
glider.map { |offset| loc.zip(offset).map { |(a, b)| a+b }.join ',' }.join ' '
}.join ' '
end


Is there anything else I need to specify?

• .. I think this is the first C&R with a controller we've had? May 10 '16 at 22:07
• @EᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏIʀᴋ Maybe! It fits CaR better than KOTH, though.
– Nic
May 10 '16 at 22:08
• @QPaysUnicornTaxes yeah. May 10 '16 at 22:09
• I think tagging this as KOTH is logical. The closest thing done before was: codegolf.stackexchange.com/q/51029/31203. Maybe putting both tags would be ideal. May 11 '16 at 19:17
• @MegaTom Hm, probably. It's certainly got elements of both. I still haven't finished the controller though, so until then I can't post anything :)
– Nic
May 11 '16 at 19:38

An idea for a king-of-the-hill challenge:

You have a "memory arena" with a fixed size. You have several programs which "reside" in the memory arena (I mean you take the assembly and put it in the arena). The goal of the game is to get another program to access memory outside of this "arena" which then causes it to die because access outside of the memory arena is not defined. The last program standing wins.

You enter in assembly code (I have not determined which architecture yet). At the beginning of a round all of the entries get randomly placed in the memory arena. Each program will execute one instruction per turn.

It would be very similar to red code but in actual assembler.

# Three Indistinguishable Dice

Given three dice rolls (integer values from 1-6) in sorted order (so as to be indistinguishable), write a program that converts them to the sum of two dice with an identical distribution.

Inspired by standupmath's The Three Indistinguishable Dice Puzzle. A follow-up "solution" video was also posted, but arguing about "elegance" of one way or another is a bit subjective. Counting characters isn't. :D

## Details

• Score is the length of the program in characters
• The program can be a function that's called somehow, or executable script that reads from stdin, or whatever's convienent.
• No "rerolling" by getting entropy from another source

## Example Test Code

Rather than doing any sort of probabilistic testing, it's easy enough to rip through the 216 (63) cases of all the three dice and assert that your function returns each value as many times as it should. It will be called with identical parameters (e.g. the cases 1, 2, 3 and 3, 2, 1, ... are presumed indistinguishable and are (arbitrarily) converted to 1, 2, 3).

The below is in Python, written hopefully generically enough to be clear to port. If your language of choice uses stdin/stdout, it would be a bit different. The testing code is just for testing and not scored (though if you want to provide it for other users of your language or I/O method, that might be useful).

from thing import f

# this is the fair distribution of the sum of two dice,
# multiplied by 6 (because each should be hit 6x more)
dist = {
2: 6,   12: 6,
3: 12,  11: 12,
4: 18,  10: 18,
5: 24,   9: 24,
6: 30,   8: 30,
7: 36,
}

d = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
for i in d:
for j in d:
for k in d:
ijk = sorted([i, j, k])
result = f(ijk)
dist[result] -= 1

for key in dist:
assert dist[key] == 0


# Collatz or Hailstone sequence efficiently

Sorry for everywhere I posted in the wrong place and thank you to all of the mods for helping me find the sandbox.

Winner is the shortest run time to check whether all numbers up to N will end in x=1 or goes 70 iterations without returning to the original number or without decreasing under a step over Log(N) steps in a row under iterating f(x)=x/2 if x is even and f(x)=(3x+1)/2 if x is odd.

Hint: all one needs to show is that for all x under iteration it hits another y in the sequence that has already been shown to hit 1.

# Sandbox questions

• How can I phrase the above challenge. I set it with parameters that halt for all natural numbers n. I care more about the speed of the program then the shortness of the program.
• Glad to see you've found the Sandbox now. I know it's somewhat counterintuitive that these are posted as answers instead of questions, but it keeps them all in once place with more chance the people who are looking to give feedback will find them. May 18 '16 at 6:36
• For code that is judged by its speed, rather than its length, we have the fastest-code tag. I've added this and a few other tags. You can click on the tags to see other questions of the same type, and a description of the tag. Feel free to use different tags - I've just added some as suggestions. May 18 '16 at 6:48
• I've removed the $s since currently this site does not support MathJax or LaTeX. Your challenge seems to work without it, but if you ever need mathematical notation I've found mathurl.com can be used as a workaround (it's fiddly so I'd only recommend it where the mathematical notation is essential). May 18 '16 at 6:52 • I've looked at the challenges containing the word Collatz and it seems they are mostly code-golf (shortest code) challenges and there have been no fastest-code challenges so far, so I expect this challenge will not be a duplicate. May 18 '16 at 7:02 • What form should the output take? Just true or false? Or the number of cases that don't get to 1 in 70 steps? I guess the latter will prevent all cases above a certain N having identical output. May 18 '16 at 7:30 • The biggest problem I see with this challenge being fastest-code is that I don't see any real optimisation potential beyond the "hinted" memoization. Do you believe anything other than actually including memoization will affect runtime significantly? If not then this feels very much like a chameleon challenge for "write an efficient memoization function" and most of the answers will probably have unappreciably different time taken. May 18 '16 at 13:23 • there are a lot of shortcuts to the clever person for instance if x is of the form 2^k then we're done, similarly if x of form 2^k-1 it will ascend k times in. row, so there are number theoretical optimization other then the hint stated May 18 '16 at 14:16 • the output should be the numbers under n the fail conditions. i.e. n that doesn't hit one,doesn't cycle in 70 terms, doesn't run for more the Log (n)/Log (2). that is Log base 2 of N. May 18 '16 at 14:19 • Just so you know, you are getting notifications because this is your post. Other people won't be notified unless you put an @ symbol before their name in your post, like @FryAmTheEggman. May 18 '16 at 14:49 • oh thank you, @trichoplax I responded what inputs should be May 18 '16 at 14:56 • Also note, neither of the optimisations you propose would actually improve the speed of a program that computes this. The Collatz operations are so trivial that calling them k times is faster than checking if a number is a natural power of 2. In addition, if you have memoisation you will only ever have to do each power of two once, rather than check each number for a non-trivial property. May 18 '16 at 14:57 • @FryAmTheEggman Yes for those examples but this does not convince me that there are no shortcuts for the smart programmer hence the challanhe May 18 '16 at 15:00 • This site isn't quite like other SE sites, I don't believe you should post a challenge if you yourself are not certain that there actually is challenge. That said, I'd guess the actual best approach is to grow a collatz tree upwards and just report the number of nodes that satisfy your properties, but that has the same problems of it being pretty much optimal already: I feel like the differences between responses would be largely negligible. Someone may prove me wrong, but until you know the competition will be worthwhile, I'd recommend against posting on the main site. May 18 '16 at 15:14 • @FryAmTheEggman Are there other SE you would recommend I ask? May 18 '16 at 15:22 • No this is the correct site for this question, I just don't think it would be particularly good. You have enough rep to chat by the way, it may be worth finding some other people's opinions; I am not the sole authority on the goodness of questions ;) May 18 '16 at 15:27 ## Kill the mosketeers Taken a NxN square field, where you are supposed to be on the extreme upper right corner, n mosketeers are waiting an execution instruction that begins with the first lefttmost shooter alternatively until the last righttmost one, in a continuous unceasable order, meanwhile, between any shot and another you are allowed to move one step either to 4 allowed perpendicular directions. T a period permitted to reload the riffle from a shot to another, dependently of steps taken from a move to another, a step is expressed in other words, as the time taken from two consecutive shots that of a mosketeer and his neighbor, so once T steps are elapsed, the mosketeer takes turn to shot again where two shots can occur in real-time. Your task, is more than saving your head on your shoulders, but it is rather the ability of killing all the mosketeers while they are reloading their riffles by a knife, noted that : a mosketeer can shot in an horizontal dimention if his turn comes out, and no moketeer is between him and you, morover, a mosketeer do never move. Given two inputs, N T, say in term of integer output how many mosketeers you are able to kill, return -1 or nil the case you end up killed no matter what you tried. ## Example: input:  4,3  steps: ...* |... .|.. ..|. |..| .|.. ..|. |..| .|.. ..|. ...| .... .... .... |..* .|.. ..|. |..| .|.. ..|. |..| .|.. ..|. ...| .... .... .... |... .|.* ..|* |.*| .|*. .*|. |*.| *|.. ..|. ...| .... ....  |$$|$$ $$| |$$|$||$|$$| |$$ *$$.*| ..* ...*  Output:  4  example 2 input:  4,2  steps: ...* |... .|.. |.|. .|.| |... .|.| |... .|.| .... .|.| .... |..* .|.. |.|. .|.| |... .|.| |... .|.| .... .|.| .... |... .|.* |.|* .|*| |... .|*| |*.. *|.| .... *|.|$$$$|$$$ $|$$|| || |*$$.$ $$.$$.$*$.$.$.$ Output:  2  • 1) Do you mean musketeers? 2) I think the diagrams could do with a bit of explaining - it took me a while to decipher that | meant shooting, $ is a musketeer, * is you and the spaces separated different states. 3) It's not obvious to me why it's not possible to get all four musketeers in the second case, and also more test cases would be good (especially some that result in -1) May 22 '16 at 5:08
• @Sp3000 i m sorry to puzzle u this way beucause the challenge isnt about deceiphering patterns, but honestly i think that goes without saying, the second part where yu have been stuck deceiphering it, the two remaing shooters cannot be killed because either of both can shoot you horizontally when you are busy stabbing the other. May 22 '16 at 9:22
• any ways, you dont have to boggle yur mind more this will gonna be dead on meta, May 22 '16 at 9:23

# Scry sort

In Magic the Gathering, your library is a stack of cards, the effect Scry 2 causes you to take the top two cards of your library and arrange them as you choose on the top and/or bottom of your library.

You have six total choices:

• Put both cards on top in either order
• Put one cards on the bottom and one on top
• Put both cards on the bottom in either order

If you are able to Scry 2 at will, you can repeatedly do so to arrange your library in any order. In this challenge, the cards of your library will be numbered from 1 to n, and your goal will be to arrange them in sorted order.

What should be the challenge here?

• Code golf to find the minimum number of Scry 2's needed
• Code golf to find any sequence that arranges your library, no matter how long
• Fastest code or code challenge to sort in as few Scry 2's as possible.
• I like the code challenge idea, but I think maybe it could be improved with Scry X instead of a constant 2. Given a nice range of cases to test, of course. May 20 '16 at 13:23
• I think this depends a lot on whether there's an efficient algorithm or not. If there is, then code golf for optimal solution with a time limit might be good. Otherwise, code golf for optimal solution will just be plain BFS or something. Likewise, if there is an efficient algorithm, then fastest code might not be so good. As long as you don't know how easily this can be solved optimally, I'd probably go with code golf without requiring optimality. May 20 '16 at 14:12
• Obviously in M:tG you don't generally know the order of your library, but it's not clear to me whether you're proposing that we would. May 20 '16 at 23:13
• @PeterTaylor I was considering both for the code challenge. Finding out what cards are in your deck as you go and optimizing for expectation might be more interesting than trying to solve the whole configuration at once.
– xnor
May 21 '16 at 6:13
• Funnily enough I was just thinking of posting this as a challenge (as a fastest-algorithm)
– Blue
May 24 '16 at 12:00

# International Choice of Urinal Protocol efficiency

A long while ago, Randall Munroe of xkcd fame wrote a blog post entitled Urinal protocol vulnerability. The titular "International Choice of Urinal Protocol" is that when men enter a bathroom that has a row of urinals along the wall, they will first take the end urinals, and then take the urinals that are furthest from the other men. All men seek to avoid awkwardness, which happens when two men use adjacent urinals.

For example, if there are five urinals in a row, then by following this protocol, men will take urinals in this order:

UUUUU
1 3 2


In this case, the packing efficiency is optimal. However, when there are seven urinals, then this happens:

UUUUUUU
1  3  2


This is essentially the worst case. Fewer than half of the urinals are used, and Randall continues investigating when the best and worst cases happen. For this challenge, though, your only task is to calculate the packing efficiency of this protocol when given a number n of urinals, which is k/n where k is the number of urinals taken before awkwardness ensues.

## Spec

• Standard I/O and rules apply.
• Input is a single positive integer n, which may be given as either decimal or unary.
• Output must be either a float or a simplified fraction. If your language cannot do either of these easily (e.g. BF or Retina), then you may simply output k (in decimal or unary).

## Test cases

Decimal

 1 1.0
2 0.5
3 0.6666666666666666
4 0.5
5 0.6
6 0.5
7 0.42857142857142855
8 0.5
9 0.5555555555555556
10 0.5


Fractions

 1 1/1 {or} 1
2 1/2
3 2/3
4 1/2
5 3/5
6 1/2
7 3/7
8 1/2
9 5/9
10 1/2


Urinals taken k

 1 1
2 1
3 2
4 2
5 3
6 3
7 3
8 4
9 5
10 5


Note: this is A166079.

Related: The Urinal Protocol, which asks for all the possible ways men could take urinals with no restriction on the first and no awkwardness.

• Did you mean 8 1/2? May 21 '16 at 4:08
• You might want to link to this OEIS sequence. May 21 '16 at 4:10
• May 21 '16 at 8:55
• @DrGreenEggsandHamDJ: Whew! Not a duplicate! :P But thanks for that anyway, I'll include it. May 21 '16 at 10:45
• @KennyLau: Thanks for those! May 21 '16 at 10:51

# Matching a string using a huge number of steps

Your task is to write a regex that matches a string you defined in as close to n steps as is humanly possible.

The regex must match the whole string without the global flag on.

# Scoring

The score would be regex length + string length + absolute difference between the number of steps and n.

For example, if n = 65536, this example has 6 bytes as regex, 49152 bytes in the string, and 65539 steps, which would account for a total score of 6+49152+3=49161.

Lowest score wins.

# Requirements

1. n = 65536 (2**16)
2. n = 59049 (3**10)
3. n = 40320 (8!)

The total score will calculated from the scores of the three programs.

### Questions:

• How can I make this challenge better?
• Wouldn't the score be 6 + 49152 + 3 for your example? May 20 '16 at 14:07
• Yes, thank you for reminding. May 20 '16 at 14:12
• fyi if you don't end up allowing undershooting, the absolute difference... part should probably be (number of steps - 65536) May 20 '16 at 14:45
• Also, can we have a regex which theoretically gives a number of steps we can prove, but doesn't work in practice (e.g. due to insufficient memory)? May 20 '16 at 14:46
• What is a step? Whatever it is, it seems uninteresting as we can do an empty string with (){65536} or something like that. May 20 '16 at 21:19

# Find the smallest number bigger than the input whose digital sum is the input

"Digital sum" refers to the sum of all the digits in a number.

For example, the digital sum of 1324 is 10, because 1+3+2+4 = 10.

The challenge is to write a program/function to calculate the smallest number bigger than the input whose digital sum is the input.

## Example with walkthrough

As an example, take the number 9 as the input:

9 = 1+8 -> 18
9 = 2+7 -> 27
9 = 3+6 -> 36
...
9 = 8+1 -> 81
9 = 9+0 -> 90


The valid output would be the smallest number above, which is 18.

## Specs

Note that 9 is not the valid output for this example, because the reversed number must be greater than the original number.

Note that the input will be positive.

## Test-Cases:

 2 => 11
8 => 17
12 => 39
16 => 79
24 => 699
32 => 5999


## References:

This is OEIS A161561.

• As far as I know it's either 2 or there is none
– user31373
May 23 '16 at 14:14
• I see what you mean, let me specify this a little better
– user31373
May 23 '16 at 14:17
• I edited the question to include the additional rule and changed the term digital root with digital sum
– user31373
May 23 '16 at 14:38
• Do you mean I should remove the mentioned part?
– user31373
May 23 '16 at 14:44
• Could I edit the question for you? You can rollback the edit afterwards if you don't like it. May 23 '16 at 14:47
• You are welcome to. This is my first Challenge I post here
– user31373
May 23 '16 at 14:49
• Done. How's it now? May 23 '16 at 15:01
• Also, you are welcome to join our chat. May 23 '16 at 15:01
• Yes thats exactly what I meant. thank you
– user31373
May 23 '16 at 15:04
• "because the reversed number must be greater than the original number." I don't know what you mean by this. Do you mean the output number must be greater than the input number? May 23 '16 at 16:39
• Yes it has to be greater. If you look at the examples you can see it: input 9 and output has to be a number which has at least two numbers which have 9 as its sum.
– user31373
May 23 '16 at 16:47
• Can I post this abandoned proposal?
– user58826
Jun 9 '17 at 13:03

# Light the Way!

This is based on the Lights Out game. There is a grid of tiles, and clicking on a tile (performing a "move") toggles the state of the clicked tile as well as the (orthogonally) adjacent tiles. This variation will also toggle the diagonally adjacent tiles.

It is helpful to note that (on a board with only two states) all moves commute, so the order in which they are performed is not important. It follows that performing a collection of moves a second time will undo what was done the first time.

There are a few ways to present this challenge, so I'll describe some possibilities. Let me know what you think. The challenge could be one of the below:

• Given a board size n (optional) and the initial state of the n-by-n board, determine an optimal collection of moves that will toggle every lit ("on") tile into its dark ("off") state.
• Given n and a sequence of moves performed on an initially dark board of size n, provide the resulting matrix of states.
• A variation on the above involving graphical output.

Input format would be flexible. n >= 1.

### Snippet to show how the game works:

The board size may be adjusted in the first input field. The second field (functionality added by Conor O'Brien) will take a list of coordinates ([[0,0],[1,2],[3,0],...]) and perform the moves for you.

var table;
var color1 = "aqua",
color2 = "yellow";
var moveList = [];

table = document.getElementById("lightGame");
buildTable();

var updateButton = document.getElementById("updateButton");
if (updateButton) {
updateButton.onclick = buildTable;
}

var toPerf = JSON.parse(document.getElementById("moves").value);
//console.log(toPerf);
function rec(arr) {
var m = arr.shift();
var x = m[0],
y = m[1];
var cell = table.rows[y].cells[x];
update(cell);
if (arr.length) {
setTimeout(rec, 500, arr);
}
}
rec(toPerf);
});
};

function buildTable() {
// get size
var input = document.getElementById("size");
var size = new Number(input && input.value || 5);

var rows = size,
cols = size;

// clear moves
moveList = [];
moveHolder.innerHTML = "[]";

// remove existing rows
while (table.lastChild) {
table.removeChild(table.lastChild);
}

// create new rows
for (var y = 0; y < rows; y++) {
var row = document.createElement("tr");

for (var x = 0; x < cols; x++) {
var cell = document.createElement("td");
cell.style.backgroundColor = color1;
cell.x = x;
cell.y = y;
cell.onclick = function () {
update(this);
};
row.appendChild(cell);
}
table.appendChild(row);
}
}

function update(cell) {
var x = cell.x;
var y = cell.y;

var xMax = table.rows[0].cells.length;
var yMax = table.rows.length;

// update cell
changeColor(cell);

if (x > 0) changeColor(table.rows[y].cells[x - 1]);
if (x + 1 < xMax) changeColor(table.rows[y].cells[x + 1]);
if (y > 0) changeColor(table.rows[y - 1].cells[x]);
if (y + 1 < yMax) changeColor(table.rows[y + 1].cells[x]);

if (x > 0 && y > 0) changeColor(table.rows[y - 1].cells[x - 1]);
if (x > 0 && y + 1 < yMax) changeColor(table.rows[y + 1].cells[x - 1]);
if (x + 1 < xMax && y > 0) changeColor(table.rows[y - 1].cells[x + 1]);
if (x + 1 < xMax && y + 1 < yMax) changeColor(table.rows[y + 1].cells[x + 1]);

// update moves
moveList.push([x, y]);
moveHolder.innerHTML = JSON.stringify(moveList);
}

function changeColor(cell) {
cell.style.backgroundColor = cell.style.backgroundColor === color1 ? color2 : color1;
}

function getStyle(elt, styleProp) {
if (elt.currentStyle)
return elt.currentStyle[styleProp];
return document.defaultView.getComputedStyle(elt, null)[styleProp];
}
body {
background-color: darkslategray;
color: white;
}
#gameDiv {
text-align: center;
}
margin: 25px;
}
h2, h4 {
color: red;
}

#lightGame {
border: 1px solid white;
margin: auto;
}
#lightGame td {
/*background-color: aqua;*/
height: 25px;
width: 25px;
}
#updateDiv {
margin: 25px;
}
button {
margin-left: 10px;
}

#autoMoveDiv {
margin-top: 10px;
}

footer {
position: fixed;
bottom: 0px;
width: 100%;
}
footer small {
color: cyan;
position: absolute;
bottom: 0px;
}
img {
float: right;
}
<div id="gameDiv">
<h2>Light Game</h2>
<div>
<table id="lightGame">
</table>
</div>
<div id="updateDiv">
<input id="size" name="size" type="number" min="1" max="20" pattern="\d{1,2}" value="5" required />
<button id="updateButton" type="button">Update</button>
</div>
<div>
</div>
<div id="autoMoveDiv">
Auto move:
<input id="moves" />
<button id="perform" type="button">Do Moves</button>
</div>
</div>

Related Questions

JsFiddle of the snippet I made.

• Option 1 would be a duplicate IMO. I do like option 2, though. May 24 '16 at 17:36
• I agree with Nathan Merrill. May 24 '16 at 17:37
• @NathanMerrill This does include diagonals too, so it's different. But I don't know how different that'd be programmatically. May 24 '16 at 17:40
• Does the board wrap? May 24 '16 at 17:43
• Option two sounds like it's pretty much a duplicate of this one, though. Except for the initial board state and diagonals, that is. May 24 '16 at 17:44
• Does it need further variation? Hexagonal board? 3d? Broader effect? Random effect? Context dependent effect? May 24 '16 at 17:48
• I'd definitely make diagonals bold. I completely missed that when reading. I think diagonals make either 1 or 2 unique. May 24 '16 at 17:50
• @trichoplax The board does not wrap. May 24 '16 at 20:01
• "Given a board size n (optional) and the initial state of the n-by-n board, determine an optimal collection of moves that will toggle every lit ('on') tile into its dark ('off') state." Or you can have "determine an optimal collection of moves that will toggle every lit tile into its dark state and vice versa". Jun 15 '16 at 22:53
• @msh210 If the goal is to toggle every tile, the solution is trivial. If the goal is merely to end with all light, then with all dark, getting from one to the other is also trivial (it's the set of all moves minus the set from the first answer). Jun 16 '16 at 13:25

## Version Comparator

Given two version strings, return a positive, negative or zero value depending on which one is earlier. Version strings consist of one or more non-negative integers separated by full stops, optionally suffixed by a lowercase letter and a final non-negative integer. Examples of versions:

1.5a2
1.5b1
1.5
2.19
2.20b
2.20 or 2.20.0 (these should compare equal)
8.1a
8.1
9
10


When comparing versions the integers should of course be compared numerically, not lexically. Missing components should compare as zero against numbers, but they compare after letters. You should then be able to recognise that the above versions are in version order, but you can choose whether this should be a positive or negative result. Reversing the parameters should obviously negate the sign of the result, but you can return a different absolute value if you prefer.

Builtins that compare versions are disallowed, but things like regexes are OK.

This is , so the shortest program or function wins.

• How do letters compare numerically? Jun 2 '16 at 12:40
• It should never be necessary.
– Neil
Jun 2 '16 at 13:10
• Test-cases please. Especially 1a1 vs 1a vs 1. Jun 2 '16 at 13:52
• @LeakyNun Added some more examples. 1a should compare as if it was 1a0 so less than 1a1 which is less than 1.
– Neil
Jun 2 '16 at 15:49
• How do 1a and 1b compare? Jun 2 '16 at 15:56
• @LeakyNun Well, you already know that 1.5a2 compares before 1.5b1...
– Neil
Jun 2 '16 at 16:16

# Find the duration of a worst-case brute-force attack

Given the following information about a 7-bit ASCII-encoded password and the computer that will crack it with a brute-force attack:

• Length of the password in characters
• Charset size (i.e total count of the possible characters one character in the password can be)
• Number of passwords the computer can test in one second millisecond (rounded down)

Write the shortest program that finds out how long the attack will take in the worst-case scenario where the computer tries all possible passwords.

• The output is the duration in this format: years months days hours minutes seconds milliseconds
• One "month" is 30 days long.
• Fractions of milliseconds are rounded up.
• You can assume that the cracking finishes immediately if it takes less than 50 milliseconds, and make the program print out Instant in such cases.
• Similarly, the cracking can be considered Neverending if it takes more than 292 billion years.
• The program can output using any method, from merely printing to STDOUT to causing a kernel panic/bluescreen with the duration as the error message.
• The input method to get the info about the password/the machine can be anything, as well. Don't use standard loopholes though.
• It's not enforced, but strongly encouraged to write a standalone program.

Here's how to calculate the charset size:

• If there's a lowercase letter, add 26.
• If there's an uppercase letter, add another 26.
• If there's punctuation, add 32 (7-bit ASCII has this many punctuation characters).
• If there's a whitespace character, add 2. Whitespace characters are horizontal tab (0x09) and space (0x20).
• Any other character counts as non-printable (including backspace (0x08), DEL (0x7F), line feed (0x0A) and carriage return (0x0D)). Add 29 if there's any of them.

Here are some applicable-in-real-life cases you can test your program with (let's assume the computer that will crack them can test 1 billion passwords per second, which equals to 1,000,000 passwords/millisecond):

• 4 characters, charset size 10 (PIN) - 10,000 passwords, output is 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 or Instant
• 8 characters, charset size 94 (at least one uppercase letter, one lowercase letter, one digit and one punctuation) - 6,095,689,385,410,816 passwords, output is 0 2 10 13 14 49 386
• 10 characters, charset size 2 (weakest valid Discourse password, contains whitespace only) - 1024 passwords, output is 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 or Instant
• 25 characters, charset size 26 (correcthorsebatterystaple) - 236,773,830,007,967,588,876,795,164,938,469,376 passwords, output is 7612327353651221350 2 14 0 26 4 939 or Neverending
• 127 characters, charset size 96 (strongest password on newer Windows releases) - written below
• 1024 characters, charset size 36 (4096-bit PGP key represented as a hexadecimal number) - written below

These are the stats of the maximum-strength Windows password:

Passwords: 560,333,510,486,846,899,384,847,242,571,130,277,659,458,884,466,874,695,582,912,274,460,529,559,443,783,341,570,989,525,270,653,136,186,432,110,439,597,936,820,880,106,519,625,601,191,574,799,863,912,148,304,962,133,852,037,202,160,056,511,510,962,873,278,300,126,526,144,267,006,137,180,032,492,751,016,171,207,701,495,935,943,049,216
Output: 18014837657113133339276210216407223432981574217685014647084370963880194169360318337544673523362047845500003550655797865897637169483847774934889398916928636347805229296463546812516445182705545212838429981490065783731353925307067135133992 5 15 19 58 55 944
Alternate output: Neverending


And these are the stats of the PGP key:

Passwords: 4,505,684,579,918,576,285,346,738,866,335,056,898,110,301,685,668,199,078,230,938,179,212,682,315,156,231,410,185,391,761,603,272,976,014,035,539,665,517,248,679,228,261,440,294,129,198,036,262,705,242,310,399,830,546,082,361,923,420,737,260,766,677,891,361,176,003,624,143,368,380,527,062,643,297,677,246,518,686,688,642,023,537,863,317,793,178,302,508,440,097,154,593,959,832,175,055,427,351,149,410,096,495,695,380,712,810,868,774,475,142,767,054,868,274,802,269,522,299,482,066,464,842,097,715,922,988,138,315,118,067,288,670,934,735,264,524,936,706,249,961,394,413,647,964,221,767,703,673,264,468,419,121,528,644,906,680,808,060,759,817,669,970,046,776,525,266,199,099,671,937,918,801,013,826,958,891,378,841,908,663,991,372,649,027,188,879,525,186,690,599,345,723,173,064,252,017,258,129,131,786,488,462,307,158,861,824,049,980,863,991,149,295,162,169,512,952,373,415,599,734,988,691,348,925,488,351,712,593,858,837,027,205,238,618,188,975,201,320,681,214,515,875,812,195,250,605,867,622,987,451,763,883,339,709,733,502,125,838,221,788,546,339,051,347,360,900,518,381,976,167,289,930,943,228,024,924,785,158,428,496,314,937,921,503,359,298,542,415,845,218,449,360,806,235,379,253,546,728,753,218,950,843,742,471,105,739,555,344,908,900,309,982,913,223,331,321,839,212,821,903,239,320,600,564,890,951,140,667,647,680,682,245,252,370,183,758,578,065,733,075,207,856,432,661,797,090,351,101,165,469,273,829,754,476,555,209,675,613,232,875,323,406,611,257,057,059,099,019,633,298,079,410,970,345,108,939,943,042,100,267,260,413,671,556,828,411,902,575,269,208,445,279,433,655,878,082,023,068,697,154,581,711,817,787,688,949,105,583,339,471,599,190,831,084,304,744,483,799,555,478,063,729,574,297,623,870,804,763,558,027,580,772,927,971,329,879,231,979,556,301,616,929,595,576,646,883,067,201,999,872,899,862,889,211,861,332,535,050,455,387,251,034,043,732,447,006,164,551,883,918,733,705,027,099,846,583,024,013,092,062,384,703,436,459,115,108,358,829,136,251,317,699,709,899,140,949,893,425,335,769,021,022,912,434,045,643,544,474,460,899,799,213,759,568,795,794,758,914,390,056,283,305,470,380,859,003,818,724,678,434,816
Output: 144858686339974803412639495445442930108998896787172038266169565946909796654971431654622934722327449074525319562291578211137739886840732034401886018044055761311424449664413690224320369299057721231224396352345948448015131278860508182828147139982752631922511354755096078964028889980704480936709984283352948061204198196785328857204061945957268141550998891534834171375541476907019128991072373909056348731183618329634024763694746476776233417623704464804027405450152026906721990999895827471385353870130056140660354679074035526421905828555132520211676677361401337091034117370453939870215183392876069255694823382473711006907851853458746913295694931911314073828877816349504523255816791677974298928074750103049081088894521647398444396729546431174466495229648516324713327536964168664025148591452750098101445502202880078966283755495859954505040675103796820824907455740718188735077328268047865426806174561044520100917915500979652319301547868727504821981520811835192875926630119576922600465887060849654310721522802609638109522185755307201898676461606130734024600227278608209698963323356340446015796148617903068964091403666193996894642822309315198786075754477250953946657292049336910661279747924178751224344877465829301109562043071275369906871767991229129085786546569052197642684662087651029574035646976531236521763373563846425925268656816387911380422031991615290633773786744123323731112880994579065426763237282889858685438654794679302568796507941872848896038602862540480809810919146613018187362072374644736799940064590439265446053422181856817801562474722208358918298576208528044087753034364036 10 24 22 32 4 679
Alternate output: Neverending

• Is there any wrong information? Jun 4 '16 at 20:43
• Please provide proper test cases, i.e. with all input parameters (speed of computer is missing) and solutions, so that we can verify our programs.
– nimi
Jun 4 '16 at 22:36
• Unless there's a good reason you should should go with our defaults and allow functions and programs . Don't allow loopholes.
– nimi
Jun 4 '16 at 22:42
• IMO this challenge would be better if it allowed simply returning/outputting an integer number of milliseconds. As it is, the mixed-base conversion will be trivial for languages that have a builtin for it, and nearly as long as the code to compute the length of time (if not longer) for languages that don't.
– user45941
Jun 6 '16 at 8:51
• You can see how many people agree with Mego's suggestion in the discussion on meta. Jun 6 '16 at 13:40
• In response to "It's not enforced, but strongly encouraged to write a standalone program.": Elsewhere in the same discussion it recommends avoiding saying "ideally your code will.... That will just be ignored anyway (otherwise the code won't be competitive). Make a definite decision one way or the other rather than a recommendation. Jun 6 '16 at 13:46

# Maximal root multiplicity of integer polynomials

Given a non constant polynomial with integer coefficients, determine the maximal multiplicity of it's (perhaps complex) roots.

### Definitions

Multiplicity: Let p be a polynomial with complex coefficients and x0 some complex number. If x0 is a root, it is said to have multiplicity n if p(x) = a(x) * (x-x0)^n where a is another (complex) polynomial such that (x-x0) does not divide a. If x0 is not a root it is defined to have multiplicity 0. Note that the polynomials we consider do only have integral coefficients (consider the integers as a subset of the complex numbers).

Maximal Multiplicity: Let x0,...,xk be the roots of of p,then the maximal multiplicity of p is defined as the maximal multiplicity of xi for i=0,...,k.

### I/O

For the input and output, the polynomials can be written in any convenient format, e.g. also as a (variable length) list of coefficients.

### Hints

A polynomial has a root of multiplicity greater than one if and only if it shares a root with it's derivative. This can e.g. be checked with the discriminant.

### Examples

polynomial     maximal multiplicity
1              0
x^7-1          1
x^8-x^7-x-1    2
x^3-3x^2+3x-1  3

• What sorts of builtins are allowed/banned? Root finding? Polynomial GCD? Jun 7 '16 at 9:19
• I did not plan to ban anything, would you suggest banning these? Jun 7 '16 at 9:22
• Not really, it's fine if nothing's banned. Just making sure it was considered :) Jun 7 '16 at 9:47
• Do you have any test cases for roots which repeat in different irreducible factors and thus demonstrate that it can't be done by counting multiplicity of irreducible factors? Jun 7 '16 at 10:49
• Answering my own question: it can be done by counting multiplicity of irreducible factors, because the minimal polynomial of an algebraic number is a factor of any polynomial of which that number is a root. So factor to irreducibles is worth mentioning as related, although it's far more than needed. Jun 7 '16 at 14:01
• I considered factoring as the obvious approach but I think most languages do not have the means to calculate with exact complex numbers (except some CAS' like Mathematica), so the method via resultants/discriminants should just provide another way, which surprisingly only needs integer arithmetic. Jun 7 '16 at 14:31
• The line on maximal multiplicity ends rather abruptly, I'd assume that that was an accident? Anyway, I'm not sure the terminology "does not divide" is correct here. It's been a while for me, but I think you should say something like: "does not divide a(x) such that the quotient is a polynomial"? Jun 7 '16 at 14:40
• Right, I think I wanted to add something regarding the constant polynomials, but now I excluded those too for the sake of simplicity. Statements about divisibility usually only make sense in the context of rings, and is defined as: A divides B if there is a C such that B = AC. As soon as you consider a field (in your example the field of rational functions) the divisibility becomes trivial, as any nonzero element divides every element of the field. Jun 7 '16 at 14:59
• The method via factoring only requires integer arithmetic. I don't find it at all surprising that an approach with resultants only needs integer arithmetic, because subresultants are the standard efficient way to do polynomial GCD. Jun 7 '16 at 16:12
• @PeterTaylor I agree, the "surprisingness" is subjective, as far as I know the resultants are usually defined via the product of the differences of the zeros. From that perspective it isn't really obvious that this might result in something even real=) Regarding the factoring we probably did not have the same thing in mind or I do not understand what you mean. I thought about factoring into linear factors, which generally results in general algebraic numbers, far from integers. What did you have in mind? Jun 7 '16 at 16:38
• Factoring to polynomials which are irreducible over the integers, as in the linked question. Equivalently, as I realised between my first and second comment, factoring to the minimal polynomials of the roots. Edit: ah, but wait. Can the minimal polynomial contain the root multiple times? Jun 7 '16 at 19:10
• I'm not sure in general, I think this might fail for some fields with finite characteristic, but for algebraic numbers (=elements of finite field extensions of the rational numbers) the minimal polynomials have distinct roots in the corresponding splitting field. Jun 7 '16 at 20:11

## Array of Integers to Array of Digits

Given an array of arbitrary length containing only integers, output an array of integers of each digit of each integer in the array.

Notes

• The input array will only consist of integers in base 10

• The integers will be in the range of [0, MAX_INT] where MAX_INT is the greatest value an integer can have in your language

• Assume that all integers will be positive, however you can interpret the integers as signed or unsigned

• String manipulation and the use of any regex is banned by default

• The outputted array must be exactly 1 deep and contain only integers

• The order of the digits in the outputted array must be exactly as they were in the inputted array

• Leading zeros are to be stripped, as they should be when parsed as an integer

Examples

[2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13] -> [2, 3, 5, 7, 1, 1, 1, 3]
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5] -> [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
[123, 456, 789, 101112] -> [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 2]
[0, 000, 000123] -> [0, 0, 1, 2, 3] //'000' is treated as '0' and '000123' is treated as '123'

• Seems pretty straightforward, but pretty trivial in most languages. (Trivial does not mean off topic, but you will likely get lots of answers, as well as some downvotes). You should specify that the integers are in base 10. May 25 '16 at 14:19
• Will the input array contain 0 or negative integers? May 25 '16 at 19:30
• You say integers, but I take it you mean positive integers?
– xnor
May 25 '16 at 22:19
• I updated the specification May 26 '16 at 12:22
• You should clarify that leading zeros are stripped, so that people don't need to infer that from the last test case. May 26 '16 at 18:51
• What leading zeroes? Numbers can't have them if they are not strings. Is it an array of numbers or array of strings? May 29 '16 at 23:12
• It may be interesting to ban the use of string manipulation. This would change the challenge a lot, but it will force the answers to be less trivial. (also note that such a challenge may be frowned upon: meta.codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/8079/31203) Jun 1 '16 at 15:19
• You mention signed integers, but none of your examples contain negative numbers. Do we only need to support non-negative numbers? If not you should specify how negative numbers should be handled and add an example to the test cases. Jun 3 '16 at 11:33
• Personally, I doubt that string manipulation is the easiest way to do this in most languages? I don't think banning it improves the question. It just seems to make a bunch of languages unusuable, and the rest just entirely ignore it? Jun 9 '16 at 20:08

# Ping Pong

## The Challenge

This challenge is to make a program that prints a text ping-pong animation. Your program is to display a string of tildes with a PING on it moving to the right. Each tick, the text PING moves one to the right one character, reducing the number of tildes on the right by one and increasing the amount on the left by one. Once the PING reaches the right side of the string, it changes to a PONG and the reverse happens (i.e it moves to the left instead).

## Rules

• The number of tildes must always be the same
• The number of tildes must be at least 30
• The number of milliseconds between ticks must be at least 10 ms and at most 1 s
• The PING must start at the left hand of the string

## Scoring

Your score is the number of bytes plus/minus the following (all that apply):

• -10 bytes for browser implementation using the ping after the hash
• +10 bytes if your implementation does not clear previously outputted frames
• More suggestions welcome

Lowest score wins.

## Example Implementation (JS, Ungolfed)

i=0;b=false;len=50;td=40;function urlPong(){location.hash=new Array(i+1).join("~")+(!b?"PING":"PONG")+new Array(len-4-i+1).join("~");if(!b){if(len-4-i<=0){b=true;}else{i++;}}else{if(i<=0){b=false;}else{i--;};}setTimeout(urlPong,td);}urlPong();

• Why do you restrict this to be in a browser? That seems to add an unnecessary limitation on which languages can reasonably participate. Jun 9 '16 at 13:06
• Okay, I made it less browser dependant Jun 10 '16 at 0:57

# Implement this cipher

(I'm not sure what to call this cipher)

## Goal

Use the algorithm (explained in the Algorithm section) to implement a certain cipher.

The program must read input from STDIN or the closest available equivalent, use the algorithm to generate the ciphertext and a key.

The ciphertext and the key will be written to STDOUT or the closest available equivalent, preferably with the format (ciphertext)\n(key).

## Algorithm

Convert the characters in the string into the respective ASCII values. For example:

Hello -> 72 101 108 108 111

Next, you will need to generate a key as long as the string with random numbers in the range of 0-9.

Hello -> 62841

Add the integers in the random number sequence to the ASCII values of the string. In the above examples, 72 would become 78, and 101 would become 104.

72 + 6 = 78, 101 + 2 = 104, 108 + 8 = 116, etc

Next, convert the new ASCII values back to characters. In the above examples, the text Hello has become Nhttp.

## Examples

(These are simply examples of what the output might look like. The output can and will vary.)

Hello, World!

Hgqqu/$\\p{ni$
0255634519253


This will be encoded

Zhjs$~koo gj$iuhofgj
60104723305544750226


## Rules

• Submissions must be full programs.
• Languages newer than the challenge are allowed.
• Submissions will be scored in bytes.
• Standard loopholes are forbidden.
• This is code-golf, so the shortest code wins.

I'm sure this challenge needs a little tidying up and making it look and sound a bit nicer. I'm not very good at writing challenges, so I'd like some advice.

• This is an actual cipher (though not usually with ASCII codes). I don't remember the name right now. But seeing that, it might be a dupe. Jun 12 '16 at 15:13
• @EᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏIʀᴋ Oh, I didn't know that. I thought it was original.
– m654
Jun 12 '16 at 15:32
• Yeah, it's called something like a key cipher. Jun 12 '16 at 15:34
• @EᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏIʀᴋ What do you think of this challenge? Do you have any advice for making it... better?
– m654
Jun 12 '16 at 16:16
• If properly implemented (i.e. with a pre-shared key which covers the full range of symbols rather than just 0-9) this would be a one-time pad, which is (in some sense) the limit case of the Vigenère cipher. It's not quite a dupe of the Caesar cipher question, but it's barely more complicated. Jun 12 '16 at 21:57
• @PeterTaylor The Caesar cipher shifts the characters up the alphabet, but this one shifts the up the whole character range.
– m654
Jun 13 '16 at 7:49
• How does this handle overflow? It's easy to imagine a scenario where z (122) gets a number >=5 added to it. Jun 14 '16 at 15:03
• @TimmyD I hadn't thought about that... Maybe it could display an \x code? That's what my Python implementation does, but I'm not sure if that will work in some other languages.
– m654
Jun 14 '16 at 15:07

# Latin vs Greek vs Cyrillic / Battle of the Alphabets

Meta: This is just a rough draft, the challenge is still under development, feel free to add suggestions as comments or via chat pinging @flawr

Points that are unclear so far:

• Is there one fixed typeface for all three?
• Will the image always be provided in the exact horizontal orientation?
• How long will the provided text be, just single words? A single line? A multiline piece of text?

These three alphabets are relatively similar and even have some letters in common, but also a lot of distinct letters. In this challenge, you have to write a classifier that can distinguish these three alphabets, when presented with a raster image of a corresponding text.

This is an image from Wikipedia that shows the differences in the capital letters:

This challenge was inspired by this message.

• What about ambiguity? Expected output for POTATO, COMA, or TAXONOMY? Jun 15 '16 at 14:03
• Good point, then all outputs are correct. But I had longer pieces of texts in mind, like multiple lines, but now I'm thinking perhaps just single words would be easier. What would you say? Jun 15 '16 at 15:39
• I'd prefer the input to be a single letter, and the correct output to list all alphabets where it belongs, with score being number of correctly classified letters in a test battery (secondary goal is byte count). That may be vulnerable to hashing tricks though. Maybe the letters could also be randomly scaled to, say, 90% to 110%? Jun 16 '16 at 7:53
• @Zgarb it's still easy to get 100% with computer vision classifiers if there is only one nicely cropped letter as input and all test images have the same exact font as the one used in training Jun 17 '16 at 8:09
• I agree, thats why I'd use at least full words or lines. Jun 17 '16 at 8:36

# Don't let those functions get away

## Introduction

My imaginary language, PremOpt discourages the use of functions. They are the source of every performance problem. Your task today is to fix beginner PremOpt programmer's code.

Every statement's and loop's (if, switch, while, for) content is enclosed in brackets:

<if/switch/while/for> <statement here> {
<stuff>
}


Switch cases are one liners:

switch <value> {
case <val1>: <statement1>;
case <val2>: <statement2>;
case <val2>: <statement2>;
}


Functions look like these:

function <name>(arg1, arg2, arg3) {
// Stuff here
}

// Calling a function:
<name>(arg1, arg2, arg3);


Other lines end with a semi-colon.

Variables don't need to be declared, they're already initialized to null, you can set a variable to a value with

variableName = value;


Outputting a value is done by doing

out-><value>


## Input

Your input is a string with a piece of code. Each row is separated with a line-feed. The input may or may not contain functions.

## Output

You need to remove the functions from the code, and put their content to the where they were called.

Examples:

function hello() {
sayHello1();
sayHello2();
}
hello();


becomes

sayHello1();
sayHello2();


Multiple function calls:

function func() {
doStuff1();
doStuff2();
}
func();
func();


becomes

doStuff1();
doStuff2();
doStuff1();
doStuff2();


If the function takes in arguments:

function argFunc(arg1, arg2) {
doStuffWithArg(arg1);
doStuffWithArg2(arg2);
}
argFunc(myVar1, myVar2);
argFunc(myVar3, myVar4);


then you need to change the arguments inside the function to match with the calling arguments

doStuffWithArg(myVar1);
doStuffWithArg2(myVar2);
doStuffWithArg(myVar3);
doStuffWithArg2(myVar4);


## Test cases

fibonacci sequence:

a = 1;
b = 1;
function getNextNumber(num1, num2) {
return num1 + num2;
}

while(true) {
a = getNextNumber(a, b);
out->a;
b = getNextNumber(a, b);
out->b;
}


Should become

a = 1;
b = 1;

while(true) {
a = a + b;
out->a;
b = a + b;
out->b;
}


FizzBuzz:

for (counter = 0; counter <= 100; counter++) {
checkNumber(counter);
}

function checkNumber(num) {
if (num % 3 == 0  num % 5 == 0) {
out->"Fizz Buzz";
} else if (num % 3 == 0) {
out->"Fizz"
} else if (num % 5 == 0) {
out->"Buzz"
} else {
out->num;
}
out->newLine;
}


Becomes:

for (counter = 0; counter <= 100; counter++) {
if (counter % 3 == 0  counter % 5 == 0) {
out->"Fizz Buzz";
} else if (counter % 3 == 0) {
out->"Fizz"
} else if (counter % 5 == 0) {
out->"Buzz"
} else {
out->counter;
}
out->newLine;
}


## Rules

• There'll be no recursive functions in the input
• Standard loopholes are forbidden
• This grammar doesn't seem to be well defined enough for this to not be too broad. What about functions in functions? What kinds of literals are expected to be supported? Can functions have the same name but different arguments? What operators have to be supported (specifically w.r.t. functions, like myFun(++foo)++)? What about functions that return things but have more than one operations, but are in a heavily nested statement? This is all just from the top of my head, there are likely more such problems. I think you would need to heavily simplify the language for this to be a good question. Jun 28 '16 at 12:58

# fix show

Your task is given n, you must print first n character returned from Haskell expression fix show.

Let me explain how fix show produces the "magic" string.

show is just escaping the string and then add quote. Since the resulting string consists only double quotes and backslash, show then essentially just put backslash before every character then quote the resulting string.

show str = '"' : concat ( zipWith (\x y->[x,y]) (repeat '\\') str ) ++ "\"" -- Well, this is not what prelude give, but


fix is, well, fixpoint combinator. But thanks for laziness, it won't do a infinite loop first.

The string is equivalent to the string defined below:

Assuming there is a series of string. The first string is "" and the next series is just application of show to previous string:

"" "\"\"" "\"\\"\\"\"" "\"\\"\\\\"\\\\"\\"\"" "\"\\"\\\\"\\\\\\\\"\\\\\\\\"\\\\"\\"\""

For all n, there is k so that for all l above k, n-th character of l-th string from series is same. That character is the n-th character of fix show

TODO: I hate the sentence above, please fix it.

The first 100 character in resulting string

"\"\\\"\\\\\\\"\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\"\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\"\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\


So, another implementation is

fixshow = '"' : zip (repeat '\') fixshow ++ "\""


## Rules

1. You are not allowed to use function fix, show, and the equivalent functions.

## Sandbox question

Is there another way to prevent answer like flip take$fix show, or without importing f k=k$f k;j n=take n$f show. And how about array programming language like APL, J and Jelly? • Your construction doesn't work because zip doesn't intersperse the characters, but creates a list of tuples. I think the backslashes also need escaping. It would be helpful to explain that the number of backslashes in sequence goes 1,3,7,15,... with numbers one less than powers of two. It would be a shame to eliminate all languages with lazy evaluation or generators. It's also vague. Python has generators but they are totally useless here. Even Haskell needs a costly import to get fix. – xnor Jun 1 '16 at 3:52 • The output should start "\"\\\"\\\\\\\"\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\". – xnor Jun 1 '16 at 3:58 • Language-specific questions are not likely to make much challenge acceptors. Jun 3 '16 at 7:25 • @EʀɪᴋᴛʜᴇGᴏʟғᴇʀ This question isn't language specific, it just involves implementing a particular Haskell program in any other language. That said, it was a bit hard to figure out what was going on as someone who doesn't really know Haskell. Jun 3 '16 at 13:18 • @FryAmTheEggman This should be closed as "unclear what you're asking". Jun 3 '16 at 13:55 • seems like a cool challenge, but instead of trying to explain lazy evaluation, just define show rigorously, and then say the challenge is to output the limit of applying show n times on the empty string. also, your output is wrong. Jun 3 '16 at 18:46 • @proudhaskeller when you say the limit of applying show n times, do you mean result of applying show infinite times on ""? Jun 4 '16 at 15:21 • @xnor 1. I just hate the answer flip take$fix show. How do I avoid it? 2. Fixed. Jun 4 '16 at 15:24
• @ChristianIrwan no, because there is no such thing, applying infinite times. instead, if you have a series of strings, first the empty string, then applying once, then twice, and so on, and at each string look at the ith character, from some point on it will be identical in all the strings of the series, and the ith character of the limit will be this character. Jun 4 '16 at 15:29
• @proudhaskeller Oh, I see. Thanks. Jun 4 '16 at 16:04
• The implementation with zipWith. Maybe you could just ban the command show and equivalents? I think implementing it and a a pseudo-fix would be interesting and not definitely better than concatenating powers-of-2-sized blocks.
– xnor
Jun 5 '16 at 2:54
• *The implementation with zipWith doesn't work.
– xnor
Jun 5 '16 at 21:58

## Golfing with ultrasound

Within medical physics, the percentage of ultrasound reflected between material boundaries can be calculated using two pieces of data: the density(p) and the speed(c) at which sound travels through the material.

To calculated the percentage reflection the following equation can be used

(Z1-Z2)^2 / (Z1+Z2)^2

Where Z1 and Z2 are the acoustic impedances(Z) of the two materials. Z is calculated such that Z=pc That is density * speed of sound in the material

## This is where the issue lies

I have two ways of asking the question

## 1:

Given the acoustic impedance for two materials, calculate the percentage reflection.

## 2:

Given the density and speed of sound in two materials, calculate the percentage reflection

## Reason

The first method will be much simpler, in the way you are just plugging values into a formula. However I feel that method 2 is heavy on the inputs, and I understand that four inputs is a large number of inputs in golfing challenges

On posting the question I will also add a number of test cases

• Firstly, I think you should add test cases while it's still in the sandbox. I find it's easy to miss important ones. In your formula you say Z=pc. What is c? I think you should add some formatting to your formulas, as they are a bit hard to read. You could also consider using some TeX service to generate an image of the formula for you. Also, density is usually denoted by ρ. Jun 29 '16 at 19:38
• I was going to use rho, but I didn't know where to find one. In hind sight I could have copied and pasted from Wikipedia. Speed should have been given as c not v. But I will make clear what I mean by Z=pc. What is TeX? I've not heard of it before? Jun 29 '16 at 19:41
• TeX is a very popular typesetting program, most of your textbooks were probably made using some variant of it. For example, go to this site and enter \frac{(Z_1-Z_2)^2}{(Z_1+Z_2)^2} as the text. You should see a much easier to read version of your formula as an image. Jun 29 '16 at 19:45
• @FryAmTheEggman Wow that's a really cool website, thanks! I will edit the question soon and hopefully it will be better Jun 29 '16 at 19:50
• With either option, it looks like there's a direct mathematical formula that leaves little to golf.
– xnor
Jun 29 '16 at 22:45

# Write a BF to Hexagony Converter!

According to community moderator Martin Ender ♦:

Hexagony is Turing-complete as any brainfuck program can be translated to Hexagony with some effort. (Source)

Your program's job is simple: take a valid brainfuck program, and convert it to an equivalent Hexagony program. For completeness, here are all the relavant commands in both BrainFuck and Hexaongy (taken from esolangs.org).

### brainfuck

brainfuck operates on an array of memory cells, also referred to as the tape, each initially set to zero. There is a pointer, initially pointing to the first memory cell. The commands are:

• > Move the pointer to the right
• < Move the pointer to the left
• + Increment the memory cell under the pointer
• - Decrement the memory cell under the pointer
• . Output the character signified by the cell at the pointer
• , Input a character and store it in the cell at the pointer (-1 for EOF)
• [ Jump past the matching ] if the cell under the pointer is less than or equal to 0
• ] Jump back to the matching [ if the cell under the pointer is nonzero

All characters other than ><+-.,[] should be considered comments and ignored.

### Modifications:

• Infinite tape in both directions
• Arbitrary precision integers (like hexagony)
• No overflow/underflow
• [ acts the same for negative numbers as it does for 0

### Source code

The source code consists of printable ASCII characters and line feeds and is interpreted as a pointy-topped hexagonal grid, where each cell holds a single-character command.

Because of this restriction, the number of commands in the source code will always be a centered hexagonal number. For reference, the first 10 centered hexagonal numbers are:

1, 7, 19, 37, 61, 91, 127, 169, 217, 271

When reading a source file, Hexagony first strips all whitespace characters. Then the remaining source code is padded to the next centered hexagonal number with no-ops and rearranged it into a regular hexagon. This means that the spaces in the examples above were only inserted for cosmetic reasons but don't have to be included in the source code. The following three programs are identical:

   a b c
d e f g
h . . . .
. . . .
. . .

abcdefgh...........

abcdefgh


But note that

abcdefg

would instead be the short form of

   a b
c d e
f g


### Control flow

Hexagony has 6 instruction pointers (IPs). They start out in the corners of the source code, pointing along the edge in the clockwise direction. Only one IP is active at any given time, initially the one in the top left corner (moving to the right). There are commands which let you switch to another IP, in which case the current IP will make another move (but not execute the next command), and then the new IP will start by executing its current command before making its first move. Each IP has an index from 0 to 5:

   0 . 1
. . . .
5 . . . 2
. . . .
4 . 3


The direction of an IP can be changed via several commands which resemble mirrors and branches.

The edges of the hexagon wrap around to the opposite edge. In all of the following grids, if an IP starts out on the a moving towards the b, the letters will be executed in order before returning to a:

   . . . .          . a . .          . . k .          . g . .
a b c d e        . . b . .        . . j . .        . h . . a
. . . . . .      g . . c . .      . . i . . e      . i . . b .
. . . . . . .    . h . . d . .    . . h . . d .    . j . . c . .
f g h i j k      . i . . e .      . g . . c .      k . . d . .
. . . . .        . j . . f        f . . b .        . . e . .
. . . .          . k . .          . . a .          . f . .


If the IP leaves the grid through corner in the direction of the corner there are two possibilities:

-> . . . .
. . . . .
. . . . . .
. . . . . . . ->
. . . . . .
. . . . .
-> . . . .


If the current memory cell (see below) is positive, the IP will continue on the bottom row. If it's zero or negative, the IP will continue on the top row. For the other 5 corners, just rotate the picture. Note that if the IP leaves the grid in a corner but doesn't point at a corner, the wrapping happens normally. This means that there are two paths that lead to each corner:

      . . . . ->
. . . . .
. . . . . .
-> . . . . . . .
. . . . . .
. . . . .
. . . . ->


### Special characters

. is a no-op: the IP will simply pass through.
@ terminates the program.

### Arithmetic

) increments the current memory edge.
( decrements the current memory edge.

### I/O

, reads a single byte from STDIN and sets the current memory edge to its value, or -1 if EOF is reached.
; takes the current memory edge modulo 256 (positive) and writes the corresponding byte to STDOUT.

## Control flow

$ is a jump. When executed, the IP completely ignores the next command in its current direction. This is like Befunge's #. _, |, /, \ are mirrors. They reflect the IP in the direction you'd expect. For completeness, the following table shows how they deflect an incoming IP. The top row corresponds to the current direction of the IP, the left column to the mirror, and the table cell shows the outgoing direction of the IP:  cmd │ E SE SW W NW NE ──────┼──────────────────── / │ NW W SW SE E NE \ │ SW SE E NE NW W _ │ E NE NW W SW SE | │ W SW SE E NE NW  < and > act as either mirrors or branches, depending on the incoming direction. The cells indicated as ?? are where they act as branches. In these cases, if the current memory edge is positive, the IP takes a 60° right turn (e.g. < turns E into SE). If the current memory edge is zero or negative, the IP takes a 60° left turn (e.g. < turns E into NE).  cmd │ E SE SW W NW NE ──────┼──────────────────── < │ ?? NW W E W SW > │ W E NE ?? SE E  [ switches to the previous IP (wrapping around from 0 to 5). ] switches to the next IP (wrapping around from 5 to 0). # takes the current memory edge modulo 6 and switches to the IP with that index. ### Memory manipulation { moves the MP to the left neighbour. } moves the MP to the right neighbour. " moves the MP backwards and to the left. This is equivalent to =}=. ' moves the MP backwards and to the right. This is equivalent to ={=. = reverses the direction of the MP. (This doesn't affect the current memory edge, but changes which edges are considered the left and right neighbour.) Some commands/description omitted for conciseness, full list here. ## Other rules: • Input/Output may be done however is most natural for your language • Output does not have to be formatted like a hexagon • Must run in a reasonable amount of time • Minimal brute-force • No brute-forcing the entire program • You can only use Hexagony commands specified in this challenge. • This is , so shortest code wins • {META NOTE: I know this challenge is hard, is there a better way to score?} • As usual, standard loopholes are prohibited. ## Test Cases: Input: (cat) ,.[,.] Output: (example) \ . . < _ . . . _ ; . . . . > , . @ . Input: ("123") +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.+.+. Output: (example) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ; ) ; / ) ) ) ) ) ) / ) ) ) ) ) ) ) / ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) / ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) . . @ ; < Input: (@primo's infinite Fibonacci) +[[<+>->+>+<<]>] Output: (example) ) \ . . . . | . | . / { } < . . . . . > [ . / > . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . @ . . . . / . ] < . > < . ] . . . _ > " ' / | . > < . . . . _ / . . . / . . [ . . . . / . . . . . . ) . . . . . . . . . . ] . . . . [ . . . . | . . [ . . . . ( . \ ) ] ) ] <  • I am quite sure that the outputs are not unique, are they? Jul 4 '16 at 16:18 • @flawr The outputs do not have to be unique as long as the inputted BF programs do the exact same thing, under all circumstances. – Blue Jul 4 '16 at 16:22 • I think Hexagony's padding rules would be important, especially if you don't require the output to be formatted like a hexagon. I predict most answers to generate tons of no-ops at the end, which can't be omitted without messing up the layout. Jul 4 '16 at 16:26 • I don't think it's a good idea to mask brainfuck in the question body, since it hurts searchability. You're going to need the brainfuck tag anyway. Jul 4 '16 at 16:36 • @Dennis Should I change the title as well? – Blue Jul 4 '16 at 16:48 • No, the title cannot contain fuck due to network-wide rules. Jul 4 '16 at 16:51 • I think this challenge is actually rather easy except for translating [] loops: everything else is a simple mapping. I think the most likely type of answer will just generate the code mostly linearly while keeping track of a "stack" of loops and then figuring out what size hexagon to put it in. Jul 4 '16 at 18:34 • @FryAmTheEggman Should I make this challenge metagolf to encourage less linear output? – Blue Jul 4 '16 at 20:29 • @Blue That would certainly be interesting, but I have doubts you'd get a lot of participation in that case. Jul 4 '16 at 20:41 • I agree with Martin, I may not have worded my last comment very well, as the [] translations will actually be rather time consuming, if not difficult. Further increasing the complexity of the challenge will make it more interesting, but it might be too much to expect more than an answer or two at that point. Jul 4 '16 at 21:11 ## Platformer game Write a platformer game. Rules: • Keyboard input, minimum three commands: left, right and jump; • Real-time. Screen should update (and the game iterate) on timer. Update speed should not depend on CPU speed. FPS should be between 2 and 120; • It should be possible both to win and to lose (the game can although be very hard and require preparing a special bot to win or to lose); • Playing field should have at lest 64 positions, minimum width is 6, minimum height is 5. • Player may move left, right or jump. Player moves down automatically unless on a platform. Jumping means moving up for some limited time (not higher than 67% of playing field's height), then falling down like usual. • Falling down outside playing field is losing the game. Stepping on 6 distinct platforms is a win. • Player, platforms and borders of area should be visible on playing field. If output method is ASCII art, it may looks like this: .....----... ............ ...@....---- ..---....... .......---.. ............  • Platforms may be horizontal, vertical, diagonal. Platforms should not overlap (except of differently oriented). Platform's projection to horizontal and vertical axes should not overlap for at least 4 platforms. Example of too projection-overlapping playing field: ............ ....@....... .--.--..--.. ............ .--.--..--.. ............  • Platforms may move. Overlapping rules apply only to initial positions. • The game should track losing and winning conditions and stop the game, outputting distinct messages in case of lose or win. • I feel like this spec is much too broad. Different answers will vary so much that I don't think they will be comparable. I think you need to specify each interaction precisely. Jul 4 '16 at 19:43 • @FryAmTheEggman, The idea was to just implement a platformer game, with rules only to prevent "degenerate", uninteresting cases (like 1x1 field with 0 platforms and unconditional lose in the first turn). Do you think it would be more interesting if each answer's game would basically be the same? – Vi. Jul 4 '16 at 21:06 • I think it is a much more interesting golfing problem if all the games are the same, as otherwise what is the point of golfing? I don't think this is a good site to try to get interesting platforming games, as I don't think this will work with either a pop-con or code-challenge either. Jul 4 '16 at 21:09 • I though it would be interesting if main point were to design the game to be compactly implementable, not just to implement already designed game in a compact way... – Vi. Jul 4 '16 at 21:22 # Compute h-index of PPCG users Thanks to @Suever for his help refining this challenge. ## Background The h-index is a commonly used metric that measures the amount and quality of publications of a given scholar or researcher. It is defined as follows: A scholar with an h-index of n has published n papers each of which has been cited at least n times. ## Adaptation for PPCG In this challenge I propose to compute the h-index of PPCG users based on the analogy • paperanswer; • paper's citations → answer's vote count, defined as upvotes minus downvotes. The following examples illustrate the computation of h-index. The array to the left is the vote count of answers in descending order for a hypothetical user, and the number to the right is the resulting h-index: [5 3 2 1 1] 2 [1 1 1] 1 [] 0 [-1 -2] 0 [0] 0 [9 4 3 ...] 3  Referring to the last example, note that we don't need to know the array entries after the 3. ## The challenge Given a user identification, output their h-index. ## Rules User identification can be defined as anything reasonable, such as user number, user name, or user name without spaces. The result must be based on actual data from the PPCG site. You may want to take a look at the StackExchange API, for example here. Note that some users have a lot of answers. For one such user the API may not give all the results, or may only give them split across several chunks. However, if you ask the API to provide the results with an appropriate sorting you may not need all of them to compute the h-index (see last example above). Also, you may assume that the h-index of any user will be less than 100. If the answer can't be tested in an online compiler (for example due to restrictions to read web content), you are encouraged (although not required) to post some evidence that the answer works, such as a screen capture. This is code golf. Fewest bytes wins. ## Table of h-indices After submitting your answer, you may optionally edit the table below to include your own h-index, in the indicated format. Please keep the table in decreasing order, so that users with higher h-indices appear higher on the table. I will remove the dummy user names when the table has some actual content. Example user name: 5 Another example: 3 Yet another user: 3  • @FryAmTheEggman Having 1000 answers is irrelevant only if you ask the API for the answers in descending order of votes. The note is intended to make it clear that asking for the answers in that order is probably a good idea. I've rephrased a little, I hope it's clearer now. As for how many results the API provides in the same chunk, I think the limit is 100, but I'm not sure Jul 4 '16 at 23:45 • Yes, I think that is much clearer now. Also, Yet another user? I hate that guy... Jul 5 '16 at 0:13 • We've had a challenge to find the h index. With that done, this mostly looks like a question to query the SE API. – xnor Jul 5 '16 at 10:28 • @xnor Oh. Pity. I didn't see that challenge. I guess this is mostly a duplicate then Jul 5 '16 at 11:11 # What is closer? Tags: , Inputs: a, b (Both integer and positive) .Output: Integer, in natural numbers sequence. We have one single atom which has a electrons, we ionize the atom with b positive charges (take b electrons out). The output is the sum of the orbital quantum numbers (n,l,ml) which is nearest to the atom shell. EXAMPLE: We take 3 electrons from 26Fe, Now we have 26Fe3+. We need to get the sum of the nearest remained orbitals quantum numbers to the shell. We have this configuration for Fe3+: [Ar], 3d3, 4s2 The nearest orbital to shell has these numbers: n = 4 l = 0 ml = 0  In this case: a => 26 b => 3 output => 4  My 3rd grade chemistry teacher asked me once to create such a program, but I didn't success, I found the paper that my teacher wrote these descriptions on it and I typed it here because I believe that someone might create an interesting code-golf for this. • You can't create the atoms and electrons tags right now (2/150 rep). Even then, we're not going to need them. Jul 6 '16 at 9:03 • This is a long way from being self-contained. I don't know whether someone who knows quantum chemistry would find the question clear, but I need a link to some background material to even start trying to work out what I'm supposed to do. Jul 6 '16 at 16:59 # KotH Chess Warriors. This game will be based on fairy chess, but really could be imagined to be anything else. Submissions will include both: A function that determines the moves of the piece (as in, how the piece can move), called at the start, and a function that determines how it moves each turn, called each turn, of course. Bot's move simultaneously; strategy is needed. A piece may make 5 moves in a row before it must rest. Bot's will be able to do any valid move they choose, and the input they will get when deciding what to do will be: a value that can be 2, 1, 0, or -1, for each possible move. 2 denotes that an ally is in that square, 1 denotes that an enemy is in that space. 0 denotes an empty space which could be moved to, -1 represents an illegal move, which may result from the board ending or another piece in the way. If a piece attempts to move into it's ally, the following things could happen; A) ally stays still; Piece stays where it is. B) ally moves; Piece moves where it wishes. C) ally is captured; Piece recaptures See below for early stage point spending system ## Sandbox I don't have the experience to host this challenge, so someone who can program these kind of things will need to help. I have sketched out some movement point system, but I need to figure out how large the board is, and so how valuable riders (pieces that move continously, like a rook), would be, compared to leapers, before i could finalise it Here is the quick system done, which could clearly be improved (for one thing, the multiple move thing probably needs to be a bit more expensive): ### Point buying system Points: each piece receives (to be decided) points base move: points spent on a move are as so. Largest dimension + floor(small dimension/2). There are no riders in this mode; Only repeated movement Repeated movement by x cost:*ceil(x^1.25) make move-only=/2 It is possible to have a leaping attack and sliding attack on the same square; it is also possible to have only one of these able to attack; How this is sorted is that both moves get their own value, and so you can attack if the attack move by itself can reach there. Examples for base move costs: • Any king move: 1 • any knight move: 2 • Zebra move:4 • Camel move:3 PLEASE NOTE: These move values on their own are not representative of how powerful a piece with that move actually is; A knight is better than a camel or zebra. However, when paired with other moves, the zebra and camel moves may become effective. Example of moves that can be purchased:  1 7 2 3 6 @55555 4  • move 1=(2+floor(0/2)):2 points • move 2=(1+floor(1/2)):1 point • move 3=(2+floor(1/2)):2 points • move 4=(1+floor(0/2)): 1 point • move 5=((1+floor(0/2))*ceil(5^1.25))=8 points • move 6=(5+floor(0/2))=5 points • move 7=(5+floor(1/2))=5 points in total, this piece costs: (2+2+1+1+8+5+5) 24 points. Considerations: • How large the board is. I'm fairly sure of having a cylindrical board; the left wraps to the right and vice versa. • how exactly turns work. So far, I have thought that the way it works is this: Everyone moves simultaneously. When you move, you deplete your remaining moves, which tops and starts at 5. You can choose to not move, and replenish your moves at any point. However, this could induce stale games which don't end properly. • I think you should add a hyperlink to the Wikipedia page on Fairy Chess for users to refer to. Also, if you're interested, there's a great game online that involves unique fairy chess pieces. It's called Chess Evolved Online. Not only are there different pieces, but you build your setup ahead of time and don't know what setup your opponent will have. Jul 22 '16 at 19:34 ## Calculate my total hours I record the work I do for one of my customers using a flat file in the following format: 0000-00-00 0000-0000 0.0 code0000 free text  The 0.0 represents the amount of time spent on the task identified by code0000, where 0000 is an optional numeric task ID and code is a project code (and does not contain digits or spaces). Because I'm lazy, I need as short a program as possible to calculate subtotals of my total time for each project, plus a grand total. If you are using plain text output it should show the hours first and then the project code on the same line, and then the grand total on a line on its own with no code. You don't need to use a specific numeric format but you should be capable of dealing with half hours (0.5) in both the input and output. • Are the beginning strings (presumably a date, and something else?) and the free text ever relevant? If not, I'd consider omitting them. Is any order for the subtotals acceptable? Jul 11 '16 at 14:35 • @FryAmTheEggman Sorry, but that's my actual input format. The good news is that the subtotals can be in any order. – Neil Jul 11 '16 at 16:26 • It's obviously up to you, but I think that input makes it a chameleon challenge. I wrote a preliminary Pyth answer to do this, and only 16 of the 36 bytes were related to summing and grouping, the other 20 were used for processing. (Surely it can't be that hard to preprocess away the first two fields and the free text? :P ) Jul 11 '16 at 17:07 • If I didn't have to preprocess them away I could just open the file in Excel and be done with it... – Neil Jul 11 '16 at 18:41 # Undone Mathematics ## Definitions I define the following: nᵗʰ Undone Addition of A Let +ᵣ A denotes the nᵗʰ Redacted Addition of A; the sum of the elements of A after n layers have been removed in every dimension:  ²+ᵣ [1,2,3,4,5,6,7] = ∑ [3,4,5] = 12 // 1D: remove leading and trailing elements [[1,1,3] ¹+ᵣ [4,2,5] = ∑ [2] = 2 // 2D: remove leading and trailing rows and columns [3,4,1]]  Then +ᵤ A denotes the nᵗʰ Undone Addition of A; the nᵗʰ Redacted Addition of A plus the sum of the elements of A:  ²+ᵤ [1,2,3,4,5,6,7] = ²+ᵣ [1,2,3,4,5,6,7] + ∑ [1,2,3,4,5,6,7] [[1,1,3] [[1,1,3] [[1,1,3] ¹+ᵤ [4,2,5] = ¹+ᵣ [4,2,5] + ∑ [4,2,5] [3,4,1]] [3,4,1]] [3,4,1]]  nᵗʰ Undone Multiplication of A Let ×ᵣ A denotes the nᵗʰ Redacted Multiplication of A; the product of the elements of A after n layers have been removed in every dimension:  ³×ᵣ [3,2,1,1,2,3,1,1] = ∏ [1,2] = 2 // 1D: remove leading and trailing elements  Then +ᵤ A denotes the nᵗʰ Undone Multiplication of A; the nᵗʰ Redacted Multiplication of A times the product of the elements of A:  ³×ᵤ [3,2,1,1,2,3,1,1] = ³×ᵣ [3,2,1,1,2,3,1,1] × ∏ [3,2,1,1,2,3,1,1]  nᵗʰ Undone Average of A Let μ denote the average (arithmetic mean), i.e. μA = (∑A)N and μᵣA denote the nᵗʰ Redacted Average of A; the average of the elements of A after n layers have been removed in every dimension:  ³μᵣ [3,2,1,1,2,3,1,1] = μ [1,2] = 1.5  Then μᵤ A denotes the average of the nᵗʰ Redacted Average of A and the average of the elements of A:  ³μᵣ [3,2,1,1,2,3,1,1] + μ [3,2,1,1,2,3,1,1] ³μᵤ [3,2,1,1,2,3,1,1] = ───────────────────────────────────────────── 2  ## Task With all this in mind, create an interpreter that will evaluate expressions that use the below operations (numbers are just examples). Alternatively, extend the language of your choice to include the notation. 1 + 2 Addition 3 × 4 Multiplication μ [5,6] Average 7 +u [8,9] Undone Addition 9 ×u [1,2] Undone Multiplication 2 μu [3,4] Undone Average  Note that you do not need to implement redacted operations. They were only defined above to facilitate the definitions of the undone operations. You may substitute any ASCII or Unicode symbol for +, ×, and μ as long as you stay consistent: You may not choose * with ×u. Each undone operator has a higher order precedence than their normal counterpart. ## Test cases: 2+u [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]40 1+u [[1,1,3][4,2,5][3,4,1]]26 3×u [3,2,1,1,2,3,1,1]72 3μu [3,2,1,1,2,3,1,1]1.625 0.1 × 2+u [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]4 2+u [1,2,3,4,5,6,7] × 0.14 0+u [[[1,1][3,2]][[1,3][3,1]]]15 1+u [[[0,1,1][2,1,1][1,0,0]][[2,2,2][2,2,0][1,0,2]][[1,2,0][2,1,1][2,1,2]]]34 1×u [[[1,1,2][1,1,1][1,2,1]][[1,2,2][2,2,1][2,2,1]][[1,1,1][1,1,2][2,1,1]]]2048 1μu [[[2,2,3][3,2,1][3,3,3]][[1,3,3][2,1,1][2,1,3]][[2,3,3][3,2,3][3,2,1]]]3.259 • I find the structure of the definitions very confusing. It would help to a) define terms before you use them; and b) be explicit about the domain and range of the operators. I also, possibly as a result of b), fail to understand the examples: ITSM that ²+ᵣ [1,2,3,4,5,6,7] should be a sum over zero elements because by the time you've removed the first two rows and the last two rows you're left with -3 rows. And the test cases are even more confusing: what is [[1,1][3,2]][[1,3][3,1]]? It looks like two matrices side by side, but I didn't see any mention of implicit operators. Jul 12 '16 at 20:57 • @PeterTaylor a) I originally had redacteds before undones, but I wanted to put the focus on the undones. I'll swap again. b) Notice that the input can be n-dimensional, so as [1,2,3,4,5,6,7] is one-dimensional, only the first and last elements in that only dimension need to be stripped off, giving [3,4,5]. The later examples are missing outer brackets, to indicate that they are 3D. Thanks for your feedback! – Adám Jul 13 '16 at 6:01 • 1. There's no way visually to distinguish the 1D examples from the 2D ones. Now that you've added some [] to the test cases, they're better. Why not do the same for the 2D examples: add a [ before the first row and a ] after the last one, as a cue to distinguish them from the 1D cases? 2. If you think that the redacted distract from the undones, you could rephrase undone addition in terms of a convolution with an n-dimensional "matrix" with elements 1 or 2 according to distance from the exterior; then introduce redacted addition as an alternative way of understanding it. Jul 13 '16 at 7:40 • @PeterTaylor 1. is done. I'm not sure how to formulate 2). – Adám Jul 13 '16 at 11:02 # Family Tree, Folder Tree Given a simple family tree in a format reasonably similar to the format outlined below, create a file tree to match it, as explained below. Input An ascii family tree in a similar format to the following:  Grandpa Jim = Grandma Jane | ------------------------------------------------------- | | | | Bill Bob Jim Jane Sam Sammyson = Aunt Jimbo Daddy McDad = Mommy McMom | | ----------- Me | | Cousin One Cousin Two  The scheme can be changed within reason, however the test cases provided will meet the following specs: 1. = Symbolizes a marriage 2. If there are any children from a marriage, there will be a | one line below the = symbolizing the marriage. 3. A - character that is below a |, or connected (by adjacency) to a - that is immediately below a | are used to signify multiple children. Below any of these - there may be a |, which will have a the first word of a name immediately below it. This full name is the name of a child. 4. The initial line of the family tree will only contain two people. This spec maybe should be cleaned up more. Note that there won't be any relationships more complicated than = marriage or | child linking two names. This means that more complicated relationships, such as divorce or step-children, will not appear in the tree. Output There will be no output as such, instead the program/function will create a directory structure matching the input. For example, the above example would lead to the following directory tree: $ tree family_tree/
family_tree/
├── Grandma Jane
│   ├── children
│   │   ├── Bill Bob
│   │   │   └── parents
│   │   │       ├── Grandma Jane -> ../../../../Grandma Jane/
│   │   │       └── Grandpa Jim -> ../../../../Grandpa Jim/
│   │   │   ├── children
│   │   │   │   └── Me
│   │   │   ├── parents -> ../Jim Jane/parents
│   │   │   └── spouse
│   │   │       └── Mommy McMom
│   │   │           ├── children -> ../../children/
│   │   │           └── spouse
│   │   ├── Jim Jane
│   │   │   └── parents -> ../Bill Bob/parents/
│   │   └── Sam Sammyson
│   │       ├── children
│   │       │   ├── Cousin One
│   │       │   └── Cousin Two
│   │       ├── parents -> ../Jim Jane/parents
│   │       └── spouse
│   │           └── Aunt Jimbo
│   │               ├── children -> ../../children/
│   │               └── spouse
│   │                   └── Sam Sammyson -> ../../../../Sam Sammyson/
│   └── spouse
│       └── Grandpa Jim -> ../../Grandpa Jim/
└── Grandpa Jim
├── children -> ../Grandma Jane/children/
└── spouse
└── Grandma Jane -> ../Grandma Jane/


The directory tree must satisfy the following:

1. Create a directory called family_tree that will contain the entire family tree.
2. Inside family_tree/ there will be exactly two directories, these are the two people at the top of the family tree.
3. For every person in the tree, do the following in their directory:
1. If they have a spouse, create a spouse directory. If the spouse already has a directory named after them, create a link to that directory within the spouse directory. Otherwise, create a directory in the spouse directory with the name of the spouse.
2. If they have children, then they must have a spouse. If the spouse already has a directory named children, then create a link to that directory and name the link children. If their spouse doesn't already have this directory, create the children directory and add a directory corresponding to each child.

Again, this is a rough draft. The spec needs to be cleaned. I welcome comments

Note that, in all cases, it does not matter where the true directory and where the link is, as long as the link is properly setup. Also, it is okay to create links to other links.