Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Question

What is the Sandbox?

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

To post to the Sandbox, scroll to the bottom of this page or click on the "Add Proposal" link below, and click "Answer This Question". Click "OK" when it asks if you really want to add another answer. Write your challenge just as you would when actually posting it. 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, replace the post here with a link to the challenge and delete it.

See the Sandbox FAQ for more information on how to use the Sandbox.

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• Most people include applicable tags in their proposal, so for instance you can search for all king-of-the-hill proposals by merely adding the tag name in quotes to the search query.

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To add an inline tag to a proposal use shortcut link syntax with a prefix: [tag:king-of-the-hill]

Answer 1

Ancient Language Translator

<insert a silly story here>

Task:

Write a program that takes an English sentence and translates it into the Ancient Language. You have to implement at least 42 words. For the purpose of this challenge, you do not have to care about special rules such as "(may be shortened to al when used as a prefix, as in albitr)".

Input:

An English sentence.

Output:

A translated version of the input, simply replace the English words with the Ancient ones.

Examples:

To be added.

Scoring:

Suggestions?

Answer 2

Nested Header List

The goal of this challenge is to complete a list of consecutive nested header numbers when given a start and an end. When given 1.1.1 and 1.1.5 you should generate 1.1.1, 1.1.2, 1.1.3, 1.1.4, 1.1.5

Specific Rules

1. Your entry must take in a start, end, and multiple optional range parameters. Parameters can be taken form STDIN (or nearest equivalent) or a file.
2. Your entry may assume valid input
3. Input will be of the following format:
   1. start and end will be strings of . delimited integers of the same length
   2. start and end will have three segments; (1) set values, (2) iterator, (3) trailing values.
      • The iterator is the first value which differs between start and end.
      • The set values are the values before the iterator. These values never change
      • The trailing values are the values after the iterator. These values iterate up as determined by the range parameter(s). All trailing values will be 1.
   3. range will be a list of integers with a length corresponding to the number of trailing values. When there are no trailing values, range is not specified. The value of range corresponding to each trailing value determines the inclusive upper bound which that entry iterates to.
4. Output will be to STDOUT (or closest alternative) and will show each value separated by at least one delimiter. Delimiter can by any character or string of characters, but it must be consistent. Output must be sorted correctly

Examples

start = '1.1.5.1', end = '1.1.6.1', range = [5]
Output: 1.1.5.1, 1.1.5.2, 1.1.5.3, 1.1.5.4, 1.1.5.5, 1.1.6.1
                                                  ^
                                                  previous value is iterated
                                                  only when iterating value
                                                  limit set by range


start = '1.1.5.1', end = '1.1.7.1', range = [5]
Output: 1.1.5.1, 1.1.5.2, 1.1.5.3, 1.1.5.4, 1.1.5.5, 1.1.6.1,
        1.1.6.1, 1.1.6.2, 1.1.6.3, 1.1.6.4, 1.1.6.5, 1.1.7.1

start = '1.5.1.1', end = '1.6.1.1', range = [5,2]
Output: 1.5.1.1, 1.5.1.2, 1.5.2.1, 1.5.2.2, 1.5.3.1, 1.5.3.2, 
        1.5.4.1, 1.5.4.2, 1.5.5.1, 1.5.5.2, 1.6.1.1

This is code golf so shortest code by bytes wins.

Bonuses

1. Allow trailing values to be values other than 1 in end parameter - 12.5% off
2. Handle incorrect number of values in range parameter - 12.5% off
3. Handle end less than start by producing list in reverse - 50% off

Answer 3

Count the Connect Four Positions

fastest-code

Connect Four is a two-player game on a rectangular board. The board is m spaces wide and n spaces tall, and players alternate placing pieces in columns. A placed piece always fills the lowest empty space in a column, and a player may not move in a full column. In the standard game, m=7 and n=6.

The game ends when one player completes a row of four pieces vertically, horizontally, or diagonally, or all m columns are full. The edges of the board do not wrap.

Challenge

Write a program or function to determine the number of distinct, legal m by n Connect Four boards after p plies. (A ply is one move by one player.) A legal position is one reachable from the empty board through a sequence of moves in which no player had already won. (A position in which one player has just won is legal.)

Rules

You may assume that 0<=p<=m*n, m<=8 and n<=8.

As usual, hardcoding is not allowed.

Your code should be at most 1024 bytes in length, and use at most 16 GB of memory.

Related: Determine winner of Connect 4

Test cases

[need to add; include OEIS]

Relevant links:

• This Math SE question

• This offsite page

• OEIS sequence for n=7, m=6

Answer 4

Compile from Brainfuck

code-golf

The professors at Brainfuck University realized their jobs are horrible, because all they do is discuss quantum mechanics using Brainfuck, so they decided to take their programs and compile them to a better language. Because of the randomness of quantum particles, their program needs to be small so it has a smaller chance of being disrupted in the Higgs Field.

Your task is to get a Brainfuck program from any input and output that program transcompiled into another language. Here is an example:

++-->><<

Compiles to the C program:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

int main(int argc, char **argv) {
    unsigned char *cell = calloc(30000, 1);
    unsigned char *cells = cell;
    if (!cell) {
        fprintf(stderr, "Error allocating memory.\n");
        return 1;
    }
        //actual program
        ++*cell;
        ++*cell;
        --*cell;
        --*cell;
        --cell;
        --cell;
        ++cell;
        ++cell;

        free(cells);
        return 0;
}

Score

Your score is the size of your program added to the size of the output.

Bonuses

• If you support Brainfuck-ng, subtract 30

Answer 5

Logic Puzzle Solver/Inference Engine

Your goal is to take the clues and other facts given in a grade-school logic grid puzzle such as these and solve the puzzle. To keep things simple, your program will only solve specific logic problems about which it can make the assumptions you wish to hard-code in, but the program need not perform any checks to see if those assumptions can be made.

You may not use:

• A declarative language
• Any function provided - by an external dependency - for the solving of a logic puzzle.

Input

Your program will take input from the command line. After gathering assumptions, the program will ask for facts written as such:

subject.verb object

for all true facts. For false facts:

!subject.verb object

Examples: If Chad bought donuts,

Chad.bought donuts

If he didn't:

!Chad.bought donuts.

If Nancy's last name isn't Wesley,

!Nancy.is Wesley.

Output

Your program will output its conclusions as such:

subject verb object.

So, if your program determines that Chad bought donuts and Nancy's last name is Wesley, then it will output:

Chad bought donuts.

Nancy's last name is Wesley.

Answer 6

New user to Programming Puzzles!

Spades CHALLENGE!!!

I would like a king of the hill challenge for bots playing the game of spades. Spades is a card game. The rules are shown on wikipedia.

Scoring rules:

• Nils allowed, with 50 points for completion (not 100). -50 for losing.
• 10 points a hand, with sandbagging allowed.
• Partnership Playing
• Sum of all four players hands cannot equal 13!

Winner is first to 500 points. The bot will be paired with all other bots entered into the competition. The pair of winners will be crowned with +10 meta-points (Mpoints), losers will get -1 Mpoints. Whoever has the most Mpoints wins - ties based upon sum of points earned in the games.

Gameplay:

• The bot with the lowest Mpoints bids first. Bidding proceeds from down until reaching 4th slot, then goes back to first slot and continues. Play starts with this player.
• The bot will be given a string of cards - AS for Ace of Spades, JC for Jack of Clubs, 2D for 2 of Diamonds, 8H for 8 of hearts, randomly dealt from a single 52-card deck. Each will be comma separated: AS,JC,2D,8H,4C,5S,8D,3D,3S,JS,10S
• The bot will get the bids from the other bots before making the bid.
• Upon winning a hand, the bot gets to continue making plays until someone else wins the hand.
• Hands are scored at the end using the scoring rules. If a team's score is less than 500, gameplay continues with a new hand.

Unfortunately, I do not know how to setup the servers or any of that stuff. I just think the challenge will be interesting. If anyone can help with that, run with it. I like to watch these challenges unfold - but I'm too much of an engineer and not enough of a programmer to make these kinds of programming happen.

Answer 7

I was thinking about a challenge on wrapping time.

I am a member here for 34 days now. I would have expected for the date to wrap to 1 month.

Rules:

• starting with hours from the joining date to now.

• first wrapping happens when you go over 24 hours, the count will be in days now.

• second wrapping happens after reaching 30 or 31 days, you can decide, to months.

• third wrapping really wraps when a year is reached, it shall be displayed as i.e. 2 years 3 month.

• round to neares full unit, i.e. 43 days = 1 month, 50 days = 2 month

• take either a build in function to get the current time or hardcode it to ´2015-12-19-11´ <- time when challenge will be posted. If hardcoding it is shorter you may take the bytecount from the hardcoded version.

• Dates after the current or hardcoded date can do whatever.

Input

The joining date and hour like ´YYYY-MM-DD-HH´ the delimeter does not have to be a - choose whatever you like.

Output

The time according to the rules above.

Example:

In: 2015-12-10
Out: 9 Days

In: 2015-10-28
Out: 2 Month

Answer 8

Browser identifier

code-golfjavascript

There are three major browsers at the moment, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome and Firefox. Sometimes, the JavaScript engines inside of these browsers work a bit differently, and that can break some applications. Therefore, we need a way to identify what browser the user is currently using!

Your answer should be a JavaScript program or function, that when run on the latest version of a browser, should output a string representing that browser. The string outputed could be anything, as long as it stays the same every time you run it. Output should go to a HTML paragraph with id O, console.log, or as return value.

Please put your answer in a snippet, along with <p id="o"></p> in the HTML section if your answer uses it.

(scoreboard snippet goes here)

Answer 9

Parse a tree for pruning

code-golf ascii-art

Windows supplies users with tree: a neat little tool that converts a directory tree to ASCII-CP437 art. It's a very human-readable format. However, it's a bit useless if you want the directory tree of an entire drive, or even just the Windows folder, as it's very hard to prune the parts you don't want. Hence this challenge.

Task

Your task is to produce a function or program that will convert the tree from one or both of the input formats into one or more of the output formats. The smaller your code, the more of a head start you have.

Input

There are two types of input that you might be given:

CP437

This is the default.

Folder PATH listing for volume Main Drive
Volume serial number is 00F3-F586
C:\WINDOWS
│   explorer.exe
│   notepad.exe
│   virus.dll
│   WLXPGSS.SCR
│   write.exe
│   
├───Boot
│   │   BootDebuggerFiles.ini
│   │   
│   ├───DVD
│   │       your.txt
│   │       
│   ├───EFI
│   │       pc.txt
│   │       
│   ├───Fonts
│   │       has.txt
│   │       
│   ├───PCAT
│   │       been.txt
│   │       
│   └───Resources
│           wrecked.txt
│           
├───System
└───System32
        cmd.exe
        conhost.exe
        winlogon.cmd
        winlogon.exe

ASCII

This will be easier to parse for many languages.

Folder PATH listing for volume Main Drive
Volume serial number is 00F3-F586
C:\WINDOWS
|   explorer.exe
|   notepad.exe
|   virus.dll
|   WLXPGSS.SCR
|   write.exe
|   
+---Boot
|   |   BootDebuggerFiles.ini
|   |   
|   +---DVD
|   |       your.txt
|   |       
|   +---EFI
|   |       pc.txt
|   |       
|   +---Fonts
|   |       has.txt
|   |       
|   +---PCAT
|   |       been.txt
|   |       
|   \---Resources
|           wrecked.txt
|           
+---System
\---System32
        cmd.exe
        conhost.exe
        winlogon.cmd
        winlogon.exe

Output

There are several possible types of output you can return, each suited to a different type of language.

Array / List hierarchy of strings

The first element of each array / list is the name, the rest are the contents. Files should be represented by strings, empty folders should be represented by a single-length array containing one string. Note: This should be returned from a function as an array / list, not printed as a string.

["C:\WINDOWS", "explorer.exe", "notepad.exe", "virus.dll", "WLXPGSS.SCR", "write.exe", ["Boot", "BootDebuggerFiles.ini", ["DVD", "your.txt"], ["EFI", "pc.txt"], ["Fonts", "has.txt"], ["PCAT", "been.txt"], ["Resources", "wrecked.txt"]], ["System"], ["System32", "cmd.exe", "conhost.exe", "winlogon.cmd", "winlogon.exe"]]

Object / Dictionary

Similar to array / list, but a little more intuitive. Folders should have the value of their contents as another object / dictionary. Files should have the value "FILE".

{"C:\WINDOWS":{"explorer.exe":"FILE","notepad.exe":"FILE","virus.dll":"FILE","WLXPGSS.SCR":"FILE","write.exe":"FILE","Boot":{"BootDebuggerFiles.ini":"FILE","DVD":{"your.txt":"FILE"},"EFI":{"pc.txt":"FILE"},"Fonts":{"has.txt":"FILE"} [...] } [...] } [...] }

Lisp-style string

Similar to array / list, where the head of the list is the directory name and the tail is the contents. An empty directory is a list with no tail, and a file is a string.

No WAY am I putting an example. No way. I've spent half the time on this question creating the examples. No way. Ok, maybe later.

Bonus

If you satisfy none of these bonuses, your submission is still valid. But its score shall infinite, so it is non-competitive.
These bonuses are to multiply your score by. Bonuses stack by multiplication. These bonuses must all be achieved consistently to be awarded.

• 100% Allow at least one input mode and output mode
• 50% Allow both input modes
• 90% Output in exactly two ways
• 50% Output in one of two ways depending on parameters
• 80% Output in exactly three ways
• 25% Output in one of three ways depending on parameters

Answer 10

Identifying spies in "Resistance"

This is still very rough, but I think it has the makings of an interesting challenge. Please help me improve it. What do I need to add? What do I need clarify?

Resistance is a party game that pits "resistance members" against "imperial spies" on a series of missions. A very important aspect of the game is that the resistance members do not know who the spies are, whereas the spies do know who is who.

How the game works

The relevant details of the game will be added here. For now, just check the Wikipedia page linked in the title.

Challenge

your challenge is to write a program that takes as input the details of every round and outputs who it thinks is a spy after each round. There are 5 rounds (missions) in a game of resistance, so the program/function will take in all the data for the first round, which includes

1. Each proposed team to go on the mission
2. Each public vote following each proposal
3. The final team to go on the mission
4. The outcome of the mission (i.e. how many passes and how many fails)

It will then output who it thinks is a spy. It will then do the same for each subsequent round.

Important Details

We will be playing resistance for (6?) people, A, B, C, D, E, and F.

Input format is flexible. It may be done round by round or all at once. However, since ach submission is outputting something for each of the five rounds, the submission may not use information from future rounds (if all information is given at once) in judging the current round.

Here is an example of possible input format:

Since the first mission requires two people, and person A is the first mission planner, the only thing input would be two letters in {A,B,C,D,E,F} indicating his selection. Then the votes of each person, in order, would be input. This continues until a mission team is accepted. Then the votes given on the mission would be input, in no/any particular order. The program would then output the letters of the two people it thinks are spies (there are 2 spies in a 6 person game). Here is an example

A B              # A selects A and B for first mission
P P P F F F      # Everyone votes, mission team is not accepted (lacks majority pass)
B F              # B selects B and F for first mission
P P P P P F      # Mission team is accepted (majority pass)
P F              # Mission fails (there is at least one fail vote). Note that the order does not matter here. 

The bot would then output two people, the people it thinks are most likely to be the spies based on all the information it has up to this point.

B F              # Any two person subset is acceptable

Input then continues for the next 4 rounds, until the game is over.

Scoring

I will write several hundred test cases (from actual games played online). Then each output will be scored in the following way:

• 1 point for each correctly guessed spy.
• 1 point for guessing both spies correctly.

The submission's total score will be the sum of all scores on all rounds in all games. The program will never be told who is a spy (unless it is used to self-score and does not factor into the actual guessing) but this information will be available with the test cases for scoring purposes.

Tie break is code golf.

---

Meta: I think I'm going to remove output after the first round, because very rarely do people ever fail the first mission. So it will likely just be pure chance.

Answer 11

Nth Regex

This challenge('s explanation) is simple: given a number n and a regex r, output the nth string that matches r!

The regex r uses the syntax used in Python, described here. The regex will be for the whole string, meaning the regex will be implicitly wrapped in ^$.

The only valid strings are printable ASCII characters, and they count up like base 95 (ASCII codes 32-126).

To prevent people from brute-forcing it, I was thinking of making it fastest-code.

Answer 12

Robots on ice

Part 1 - The basic

You are helping a robot R on an iced island. R can go up/down/left/right. But since the island is made of ice, it cannot move only 1 square at a time, but instead moves in straight line. Your task is to help R reach G.

Input

The input (file, stdin, input, whatever suits you) is an n×m matrice with the following characters:

• R The robot
• G The goal
• # An obstacle that stops the robot
• Ice

The island is surrounded by a wall: the edges of the matrice always consist of #.

Output

A list of instructions consisting of U/D/L/R, corresponding to up/down/left/right.

The list should be the shortest possible. The distance traveled by the robot doesn't count.

The output should be the map with the instructions on it, with each instruction at the right coordinates. Each of RG# should be displayed if not overriden by an instruction (that will always be the case for R)

Example

Input:

##########
# #      #
#        #
#  G #   #
#        #
#    R#  #
#        #
##########

Output: Since D,R,U,L,D is one possible solution, the output should be:

##########
# #D    L#
#        #
#  G #   #
#        #
#    D#  #
#    R  U#
##########

Another solution, U,R,U,L,D, should be output as:

##########
# #D    L#
#        #
#  G #   #
#    R  U#
#    U#  #
#        #
##########

Input:

####################
###R             ###
#  ######          #
#      #####       #
##                G#
###              ###
####################

Output:

####################
###R            D###
#RD######          #
#U L   #####       #
##R               G#
###U            L###
####################

You can assume that the puzzle always has at least 1 solution

Part 2 - New options

The pitch is the same, but new characters can be displayed:

Input

The input (file, stdin, input, whatever suits you) is an n×m matrice with the following characters:

• R The robot
• G The goal
• # An obstacle that stops the robot
• Ice
• W Some water. Robot doesn’t like water
• B a Box. Robot can push the box 1 square at a time, in front of him (not on the side), if the next square is . It cannot be pushed into the water, through the goal… Robot cannot push 2 boxes at once. When pushing, the robot stays in place.
• 1 a numbered teleportation door. Always in pair. When entering a teleportation door, Robot will continue sliding in the same direction through the other door. Can be used more than 1 time.

The island will this time be surrounded by water.

Output

A list of instructions consisting of U/D/L/R, corresponding to up/down/left/right.

The list should be the shortest possible. The distance traveled by the robot doesn't count.

This time the output won't be displayed on the map, but on stdout. The format doesn't matter:

UDRL

or

U
D
R
L

are accepted

Example

Input:

WWWWWWWWWW
W W      W
W        W
W  G 1   W
W        W
W    1R  W
W        W
WWWWWWWWWW

Output:

L

Input:

WWWWWWWWWW
W W      W
W    #   W
W  G     W
W        W
W    BR  W
W        W
WWWWWWWWWW

Output:

LLUL

The first L moves the box (but not the Robot) 1 square:

WWWWWWWWWW
W W      W
W    #   W
W  G     W
W        W
W   B R  W
W        W
WWWWWWWWWW

Input:

WWWWWWWWWWWWW
W         # W
W G 2       W
W           W
W   B 1     W
W#2         W
W   # 1R   #W
W          #W
W    #     #W
WWWWWWWWWWWWW

Output:

L #entering teleportation 1
L #pushing the box to the left
L #going to the box
U #entering teleportation 2

The solution RULU is also valid

Input:

WWWWWWWWWWWWW
W #         W
W     #     W
W#   1      W
W           W
W           W
W    1 R    W
W           W
W    G      W
WWWWWWWWWWWWW

Output:

L #entering teleportation 1
U #going to the wall
R #going to the wall
D #entering teleportation 1

In this situations, Robot cannot moves to the left:

W  GBR   W

W  #BR   W

W  BBR   W

W  WBR   W

W    R   W

You can assume that the puzzle always has at least 1 solution

Part 3 - With help

Same as part 2 but with others robots:

Input

The input (file, stdin, input, whatever suits you) is an n×m matrice with the following characters:

• R The robot
• G The goal
• # An obstacle that stops the robot
• Ice
• W Some water. Robot doesn’t like water
• B a Box. Robot can push the box 1 square at a time, in front of him (not on the side), if the next square is . It cannot be pushed into the water, through the goal… Robot cannot push 2 boxes at once. When pushing, the robot stays in place.
• 1 a numbered teleportation door. Always in pair. When entering a teleportation door, Robot will continue sliding in the same direction through the other door. Can be used more than 1 time.
• abcde up to 5 robots that can move the same as Robot. They cannot go through other robots, including R, and can pass through the Goal. They can be sacrified by going into the water. They can be used more than 1 time.

The island is surrounded by water.

Output

A list of instructions consisting of U/D/L/R, corresponding to up/down/left/right, prefixed by the name of the robot moving.

The list should be the shortest possible. The distance traveled by the robot doesn't count.

As usual, theformat doesn't matter:

a:UDR
R:LU

or

aU
aD
aR
RL
RU

are accepted

Example

Input:

WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
W        a     # W
W   G            W
W                W
W                W
W                W
W             R  W
W                W
W       #        W
W             #  W
W                W
WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

Output:

a:R
R:UL

The answer DLUL is valid but not the shortest

Input:

WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
W                W
W                W
W                W
W                W
W  G    a    R   W
W                W
W                W
W                W
W                W
W                W
WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

Output:

a:U
R:L

Input:

WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
W           #    W
W                W
W  #             W
W           G    W
W                W
W                W
W           b    W
W   R       a    W
W                W
W                W
WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

Output:

b:U
a:UL
R:UR

Input:

WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
W                W
W           #    W
W          B     W
W  #             W
W     G          W
W                W
W  #             W
W   e       R#   W
W                W
W           a    W
WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

Output:

e:R
R:U
a:UL
R:LLDLUR

Input:

WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
W                W
W         G #    W
W   b            W
W                W
W           a    W
W   c            W
W           #    W
W   R            W
W                W
W          #     W
WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

Output:

a:U
b:RD
a:D
C:RD
R:RU

Input:

WWWWWWWWWW
W    G   W
W aBbBR  W
WWWWWWWWWW

Output:

a:L
b:LL
R:LLU

In this situations, Robot and b cannot move to the left:

W  GaRb  W

W  #b#R  W

W aBbBR  W

You can assume that the puzzle always has at least 1 solution

Sandbox Questions

Has it been done before?

What do you think? Is it understandable? Should I do 3 separated challenges (and in the sandbox)? More, less? Which part needs more examples? What part is unclear?

I would like to go with shortest-code win. Should I use kolmogorov instead?

Answer 13

Everything about PI

code-golf

Pi is the most popular transcedental number. As a result, pi has been thoroughly studied. This challenge is in spirit of 9-Hole challenge.

1. Digits of PI

Given n and k, output n'th digit after the decimal point in the base-k representation. For example, the 5th digit of PI base 10 is 9.

5 10
9
10 2
0
6 16
10

If the base is more than 10, output like in the last test case

More information : http://www.virtuescience.com/pi-in-other-bases.html

2. Continued fraction of PI

Given n, output n'th number in continued fraction of Pi.

5
292
7
1

3. Closest to PI

Given a positive integer d, output the integer n such that n/d is closest to pi. For example, 17/5 is closer to pi than any other n/5.

 5
 17
 7
 22
 21
 66

4. Closest to PI 2

Given a positive integer n, output the integer d such that n/d is closest to pi.

5
2
7
2
20
6

Restriction.

1. You should not have any floating-number buildin, only integer, including PI constants.
2. Standard loophole is disallowed.
3. The program may be 4 program or a program that reads challenge number.

Sandbox Question

Originally, I have 5 challenge, 4 more required. Now, one of them is dupe. 5 more required.

Answer 14

How to print 2016 using only the number 2?

Print 2016 using only the digit 2 operators and native language built-in functions.

The objective is to

• Output the integer 2016 without using any digits except 2.
• no characters / strings literals are allowed, i.e. no tricks like ord('b')
• The code that uses the least number of 2s in the code wins.

For example, in python, the following code uses 8 twos.:

>>> int(str(2**2*2) + str(2**2)) * int(str(2) + str(2**2))
2016

Or like this code, uses 13 twos:

>>> 2 ** 2 ** 2 * 2 ** 2 ** 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 - 2 ** 2 ** 2 * 2
2016

Answer 15

Growing Quine 2

code-golfquine

Your task is to give program P1..P5 so that.

1. For all k<5, length of Pk < length of Pk+1
2. For all k<5, Pk outputs Pk+1
3. For all k<=5, Pk is semi-pristine program. (Program that if any run on the source-code is deleted, will output different output)
4. P5 return P1 sufficient times that the output will be longer than P5

Shortest P1 wins

Answer 16

Zipping double quine.

code-golf quine

You must provide 2 program, A and B. Both are a quine and have same length.

If A and B is zipped each other(Both when A is zipped first, or B is zipped first), the result is also an quine.

Standard Loopholes is not allowed and standard quine rules apply.

Examples

If program A is ABCDEF and program B is GHIJKL then

slangi "ABCDEF"
ABCDEF
slangi "GHIJKL"
GHIJKL
slangi "AGBHCIDJEKFL"
AGBHCIDJEKFL
slangi "GAHBICJDKELF"
GAHBICJDKELF

Answer 17

War of Flatland

king-of-the-hill

If you haven't read Flatland, please do so here. It is a must-read, for mathematical and non-mathematical alike.

Oh no. No no no! War has broken out in Flatland. Society has crumbled, and all the women and children are either hiding or dead¹. It is total anarchy, kill or be killed. It is such conflict that the 4th dimensional people have erected indestructible borders to prevent the conflict spreading.

On the plus side, if you came out on top, you could rule (some of) the entire world!

Specifications

• You can be a shape with three or more sides. (No women¹, remember?)
• All shapes are regular.
• You can only see by sight. (No feeling; you'll be killed if you get close enough to do that!)
• Everybody starts with 1 health.
• You can hurt other people by stabbing one of their edges with a vertex.
• The vertex of an n sided shape deals 1/n damage.
• An n sided shape has 4n angles of vision (sensors evenly spaced around the shape which see the nearest point and return the distance to it).
• An n sided shape can see 2n different distances (range [0,16))
• People don't see themselves. (What good is sight if your body gets in the way?)
• People are all the same size (radius).
• People can see everything within 16 units of their centre point.
• If your health is 0 or below, you are killed.
• The world has borders.
• You can rotate by a maximum of 15 degrees either direction, then move exactly 1 unit towards either of your vertices every turn.
• Each shape's "radius" is 8 units.
• Degrees are anticlockwise from 3 O'clock. The 0th sensor is at 3 O'clock relative to the shape's orientation.

¹ This is not me being sexist. Read Flatland.

Sandbox Meta:

I am using the Sandbox as a public incubator. I will build up and work on the challenge until it is ready, then post it as a question. But it made more sense to let others see, comment on and help with this challenge's development.

The Specifications are probably not going to remain in this format once the Stack Snippet and actual code is up and running.
I am working on, and have got quite far with, a JavaScript class to let people write code. If anyone can write a code to do the _^boring rendering thing onto a HTML5 canvas, I would be grateful.

Stuff I plan to add:

• A stack-snippet battlefield
• A JavaScript class to let people write code
• A web-socket system to let people make submissions in other languages
• A system to pull submissions from answers (I'm no good at this sort of thing)

Answer 18

Print Euler's number on its own graph

code-golf

Print the first n characters of Euler's number (e, 2.718281828459...) on a 'graph' of e^n. For example, input 3 (the x and y-axis scales here are provided for reference, and need not be implemented in your program):

20 |         1
19 |
18 |
17 |
16 |
15 |
14 |
13 |
12 |
11 |
10 |
 9 |
 8 |
 7 |     7
 6 |
 5 |
 4 |
 3 | 2
 2 |
 1 |
 0 | - - - - - - -
     1   2   3
      digit #

In the example above, note that:

• Three digits of Euler's number are presented
• Each digit is shown at a height equal to e^n, where n is the digit number. 2, for example, is shown at height 3 because e^1 = 2.72, which we round up to 3. You may round up or down, see below.

Various other informational bits:

• Rounding need not be implemented; 271 is acceptable output for input 3, as is 272.
• You will always be provided with input >= 1 , and your input will never contain decimal places nor any characters other than 0-9.
• You may round the y value up or down, I.e. e^3 = 20.0855 may be shown as y=20 or y=21.
• Your graph must have higher y-values at the top and higher x-values to the right; it must have a positive slope
• You may use any amount of horizontal spacing >= 1 between successive digits. In the example above, there are 3 spaces between successive digits. You just can't have digits stacked on top of eachother.
• You are not required to print scales on the x or y axis.
• Your input will always be <= 10.
• You may hardcode the required digits if you so desire.

Answer 19

Print as many numbers as you can

A restricted-code challenge where you have two occurrences of each ASCII character from 20 to 7E to write as many programs as you can to print single distinct integers (one integer per program). For example, you cannot have A and AA to print 10 and 1010 in CJam, respectively, as that is three occurrences of A.

Full programs are not required.

You get 1 point for each integer you print. In the case that two answers create the same number of integers, the tiebreaker is the answer that uses the fewest bytes to create the integers.

Is this a good idea for a challenge? Also, is it a dupe? I feel like I've seen it before but I'm not sure.

Answer 20

Smallest Turing Complete Interpreter

Sandbox Notes

• Has anything like this ever been done before?
• Do you think this will be well received?
• In my research I couldn't find a simple definition of what makes a language "Turing complete". What alterations or additions should I make to the language rules? I would prefer that the language in every answer was not exactly the same, but at the same time I want to keep the complexity as low as possible (while still being Turing complete) so that ideally one of the answers would become the world's smallest (non-eval) interpreter.
• Are there any other loopholes I missed?

Let me know in the comments!

---

Your challenge is to make the smallest possible interpreter for a programming language.

What is the language we are interpreting?

You get to create the language! You can implement any instructions you like, however the language must be Turing complete. For the purposes of this challenge, your "Turing complete" language must be able to:

• Store and retrieve an arbitrary amount of data in memory The amount must be theoretically infinite, but your interpreter only needs to handle a minimum of 64 kilobytes (256 ^ 0xffff distinct values). The format could be an array of numbers, a string, a very large integer (if the language of your interpreter supports 524288-bit integers :P ) or any other format that provides the same number of distinct values.
• Loop conditionally The loop must also be able to alter the execution flow (if you implement a while loop that can only have one instruction in the body, it won't be able to affect anything outside of the while loop). This can be one command (eg: while A do { B C D }) or two (eg: if A then B and goto C) or any number that produces the same effect.
• Print any ASCII character This includes code points 32 to 126 inclusive. Newline is not required but being able to print characters outside of this range is fine.

It does not need to take input. Any extra features are fine as long as it meets these requirements. The language does not have to be pleasant to use, but each of these requirements must be usable in the real world.

See the languages here for some inspiration...

Input

• Your interpreter must take a single string containing the source code of a program in your language.
• The input will always be a valid program. You do not need to handle endless loops, impossible instructions, etc.

Output

• A single string containing the output of the program.
• A single trailing newline is allowed, any other leading or trailing whitespace is not.

Rules

• The only rule is that you cannot use eval (or equivalent) in your interpreter.
• Your interpreter must be a full program, not just a function. Input and output must be from STDIN, STDOUT or their equivalents.
• The interpreter and the specifications of your language must be posted in your answer. Make sure you include all details that prove the language is Turing complete!
• Your language can be identical to an existing language or a language from another answer.

Remember...

This is code-golf. Your score is the number of bytes in the source code of your interpreter, so design your language to minimise this score.

Good luck!

---

Sample Answer

JavaScript (ES6), 148 bytes

s=prompt();o="";m=[];for(p=i=0;c=s[i];i++)v=m[p],+c?c-1?c-2?c-3?c-4?o+=String.fromCharCode(v):p++:p--:m[p]=~~v+1:m[p]=~~v-1:m[p]?i=m[p+1]:0;alert(o)

Language Specification

Memory is stored on an infinite tape. The pointer variable points to a position within this tape. The index variable holds the index of the current instruction in the source code being executed. Each instruction is a single-digit number. The numbers do the following:

• 5 = print character ASCII code at pointer
• 4 = increment pointer
• 3 = decrement pointer
• 2 = increment value at pointer
• 1 = decrement value at pointer
• 0 = if the value at pointer is non-zero, set index to the value at pointer + 1

Explanation

Using numbers instead of letters for the instructions means I can check with c-3 instead of c=="x".

s=prompt();
o="";
m=[];
for(p=i=0;c=s[i];i++)
  v=m[p],
  +c?
    c-1?
      c-2?
        c-3?
          c-4?
            o+=String.fromCharCode(v)
          :p++
        :p--
      :m[p]=~~v+1
    :m[p]=~~v-1
  :m[p]?i=m[p+1]:0;
alert(o)

Test

prompt = () => input.value;
alert = (output) => result.textContent = output;
var solution = _=>{ s=prompt();o="";m=[];for(p=i=0;c=s[i];i++)v=m[p],+c?c-1?c-2?c-3?c-4?o+=String.fromCharCode(v):p++:p--:m[p]=~~v+1:m[p]=~~v-1:m[p]?i=m[p+1]:0;alert(o) };

<textarea id="input" rows="5" cols="70">222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222522222222222222222222222222222522222225522254222222222222222222222222222222222222222222225111111111111531111111111111111111111115222222222222222222222222522251111115111111115425</textarea><br />
<button onclick="solution()">Go</button>
<pre id="result"></pre>

---

Tags: code-golf interpreter language-design

Answer 21

Find my way

I wanted to propose a challenge that is code golf (shortest answer wins), but with more programming challenge than parsing and printing funky text. Let's see if it sticks.

You are given a maze map, such as this:

#################################################
##########                    ######  ##### 1 ###
####   ##   ######  ########  #####     ####  ###
##   ###   #######  ########   ######  ###    ###
## X  ##  ########  #####      ####   #####  ##  
#                      ##      ##    ##      ##  
###################   ####   #####   #   ##  ##  
###   #############  #####   ######  #  ##   ####
##   ###             ##      ##    ##   ##     ##
#   ##      ####     ##  #   #   #      ###    ##
#  ####              ##      #   #  #        ####
#   #####   ###    ####   #####  #  #############    
#  #####   #####  ####   ##  ##     #############
   ###             ##     #  #     ########      
   ##     ####    #####   ####     ########   ###
  ##     ###                ##        #####   ###
          #####################   #   #####      
#####       ##############  ##   ###    #########
##      #   ###     ######  ##    #   ###########
#########        #               ##########      
      ###   ###     ##   ##################      
      ###   ##########   ########################
#################################################

and you need to help the player 1 find the goal X. You can assume the following rules apply to the input map:

• it is a n x m ASCII rectangle (i.e. n lines of m characters);
• only the following characters are allowed: #, 1, X, (whitespace) and newline;
• # represent walls (that can't be crossed), represent empty space (that can be crossed); you can go anywhere in the n x m rectangle but you can't leave it (it's not Pacman).

If the maze has a solution, you shall produce an output of the following form:

#################################################
##########DLLLLLLLLL          ######  ##### D ###
####   ## D ###### U########  #####     ####D ###
##   ### DL####### U########   ######  ###  D ###
## X  ## D######## U#####      ####   ##### D##  
#  ULLLLLL         UL  ##      ##    ##     D##  
################### U ####   #####   #   ## D##  
###   ############# U#####   ######  #  ##  D####
##   ###  RRRRRRRRRRU##      ##    ##   ##  D  ##
#   ##    U ####     ##  #   #   #DLLLL ### D  ##
#  ####   U          ##      #   #D # ULLLLLL####
#   ##### U ###    ####   #####  #D #############    
#  #####RRU#####  ####   ##  ##  DL #############
   ###  U          ##     #  #  DL ########      
   ##   U ####    #####   ####DLL  ########   ###
  ##RRRRU###                ##RRD     #####   ###
    ULLLLL##################### D #   #####      
#####    U  ##############  ##  D###    #########
##      #U  ### DLL ######  ##DLL #   ###########
#########ULLLLLLL#ULLLLLLLLLLLL  ##########      
      ###   ###     ##   ##################      
      ###   ##########   ########################
#################################################

where:

• the letters U, R, D and L represent movements by 1 character to the, respectively, up, right, down and left;
• the letter chain represent a valid path from the original 1 (which has been replaced by a direction character) and X.

If the maze has no solution, you should return void, NULL or anything equivalent.

Final rules:

• this is code golf, so the shortest solution wins;
• typical code-golf rules for input and output apply.

Answer 22

Iterating through Doubles

This challenge is relatively simple: You are passed two floating point numbers, a and b; you must print every floating point in between in order.

• I don't care if your output includes a or b. You can choose to include/exclude them if you wish. For my examples, I will include a, but exclude b.
• You can assume that a <= b
• You should use IEEE 754 floating point numbers. As to the format of the numbers, I do not care, though I will be using binary32 in my examples.
• Your program must not print any NaNs, infinities, or print out the same number twice. -0 is the same as 0.
• Ifa or b cannot be perfectly represented in floating point, you must round-to-nearest them (standard for most languages). You can assume that a and b won't round to infinity.
• Your program must have a runtime of O(N), where N is the total number of floating point numbers in between a and b.
• Your program must not use more than O(1) storage. The only exception to this is for storing your output before printing it all.
• Builtins that are able to generate floats in order are not allowed (such as Julia's nextfloat())

For the following examples, I have used this webpage to generate the numbers, and thus my examples may have human errors.

-5.6E-45, 5.6E-45
-5.6E-45, -4.2E-45, -2.8E-45, -1.4E-45, 0, 1.4E-45, 2.8E-45, 4.2E-45

-0, 0
No output, though printing either 0 or -0 would be allowed (but not both)

299.9998, 300.0002
299.9998, 299.99982, 299.99985, 299.99988, 299.9999, 299.99994, 299.99997, 300, 300.00003, 300.00006, 300.0001, 300.00012, 300.00015, 300.00018, 300.0002

1.9999998, 2.000001
1.9999998, 1.9999999, 2, 2.0000002, 2.0000005, 2.0000007, 2.000001

-3.4028235E38, -3.402822E38
-3.4028235E38, -3.4028233E38, -3.402823E38, -3.402829E38, -3.4028227E38, -3.4028225E38, -3.4028222E38

3.4028229E38, 3.4028235E38
3.4028229E38, 3.402823E38, 3.4028233E38, 3.4028235E38

Answer 23

Coaxial and Copolar?

code-challengegeometrytrigonometry

Introduction

SANDBOX NOTE: Diagrams soon

Copolar: Two triangles ABC and A'B'C' (not necessarily in the same plane) are said to be copolar if and only if the lines AA', BB', and CC' are concurrent at one point V.

Coaxial: Supoose two triangles ABC and A'B'C' are defined such that AB and A'B' intersect at X, AC and A'C' intersect at Y, and BC and B'C' intersect at Z. Then, the two triangles ABC and A'B'C' are said to be Coaxial if and only if X, Y, and Z are collinear.

Desargue's Theorem: Copolar triangles are coaxial, and conversely.

The Challenge

Your challenge is to write two entire programs (but not necessarily in the same language, if you so desire) which detect whether or not two triangles are Coaxial/Copolar. One program must detect the existence of V, and the other must check the collinearity of X, Y, and Z (As defined above). You should provide some explanation or proof that your two programs perform these two different checks. Your score in this challenge is the Levenshtein distance between the two programs, with lowest score being dubbed winner.

Input

You will receive 6 vectors, all of which containing an x, y, and z floating-point Cartesian coordinate, to represent the vertices of ABC and A'B'C'. This information may be received by your program in any convenient format, including command line arguments, nested lists, etc. The two programs you submit should take input in the same manner.

Output

Your program should print a truthy value if ABC and A'B'C' are coaxial/copolar, and a falsey value otherwise. As this will likely require floating-point calculations, we establish some leniency:

Choose a constant value 0 < ERR < 0.01, for use in both programs.

• If the pairwise intersections of AA', BB', and CC' intersect within ERR units of one another, the given triangles should be considered copolar.

• If the point Z lies closer than ERR distance from the line XY, the given triangles should be considered coaxial.

Standard techniques for checking floating point calculation equality should be sufficiently accurate for this challenge.

Since copolar triangles are also coaxial, the programs should output the same value in all but extreme cases.

It should be assumed that any cross section of the cartesian space provided is an Extended Euclidean Plane. Note that it is possible that the vertex V or any of X, Y, and Z may be an ideal point, and this is a case that should be prepared for.

Test cases

SANDBOX NOTE: Coming soon...

Answer 24

Cookies are being served! Sibling rivalry ensues! Each of the twins wants the maximum quantity of cookie. The problem is that the cookies are of somewhat different sizes, not surprising since they are home baked. So you weigh each of the cookies and devise a program to help you allocate them to each twin such that the difference in total weight of the cookies each twin gets is minimized. Coding up the program is your task today!

Input

Each case is described on a single line that begins with the number of cookies (no more than 100) followed by the weight of each (in integer grams, no more than 1000 grams).

Output

For each case, display the minimum total weight difference.

Sample Input

5 6 8 5 2 6

2 25 62

Sample Output

1

37

---

I asked this earlier and it was put on hold. Not sure what needs to be changed.

Answer 25

Count the ones!_{^{(better title needed)}}

code-challenge [Sandbox-note: Is this really still code-golf?]

counting number [Sandbox note: Need to find descriptive tags]

Void Corp needs you!

Thanks to extreme advancements in a technology called null-space we are able to compress any number of 0-bits into just one memory block. The problem is that storing 1-bits is extremely expensive now. To evaluate which data we should keep we need a program that count all 1-bits in a string. Sadly our programmer is currently in forced vacation after a caffeine-incident, so it is up to you now to help us out.

Your code should contain as few 1-bits as possible when stored in null-space.

We have heard of this strange Unary. As our programmer is the only one able to understand it, we are currently not able to implement it.

Task

Write a program that counts all 1-bits in a given string.

You may provide a function or fully functional program. Input will be provided via STDIN or argument and should be printed to STDOUT or returned.

Your answer must be in an existing language, especially the interpreter must already exist. No retro-active coding of a language that consists entirely of NUL (unless I missed it). [Sandbox note: Don't tell me there is such a thing.]

Scoring

Count the 1-bits in your code. Fewest amount wins.

[Sandbox note: Should add script to paste code into for evaluation]

Sandbox Questions

What do you think of the task? It seems pretty basic to me, the twist is the Scoring.

What do you think of the scoring? I want to encourage usage of obscure/lengthy commands which are normally not used in CodeGolf. Your opinion?

Does someone happen to have a script for evaluation lying around? Do you have anything to add?

Is binary appropriate for this question?

Answer 26

Fixed Width

Related.

We like fixed width. We want you to evaluate a string
on it's "fixed width"-ness. However, this string will
not be a regular string. This input will be presented
to your code as thus: "name1, name2, lin1,..., linN".

Each of linK is a single line of a transcript; you'll
assume that the speakers alternate, and that each lin
is will not have trailing whitespace, like this:     

You may take input in the form of a function or a program, as a string with commas, a list, or a series of arguments.

Say your input is rob, emily, hi, hey you, last night was nice, the best i've had. Then, the result would be:

<rob> hi
<emily> hey you
<rob> last night was nice
<emily> the best i've had

Then, this input would have a "fixed width"-ness of 2. This is what you would return/print. That is, you are to output the length of the longest run of fixed width messages.

Test cases

input => output

rob, emily, hi, hey you, last night was nice, the best i've had => 2
a, b, hello, hola!, no, what?, why, why not, abcdef, fededa, 012345 => 3

---

I think this should be code-golf, but I think this could also work as a fixed-width code-challenge, maybe.

Answer 27

Hexotria number

Inspired by Triangular Ulam spiral

code-golf

For instance we write number in triagular spiralling way

      30  10  26  51
    31  11  09  25  50
  32  12  01  08  24  49
33  13  02  00  07  23  48
  14  03  04  05  06  22
    16  17  18  19  20
      39  40  41  42

Then we read in spiralling hexagonal way (Starting from 0, 1 ,2) then we get

0, 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 3, 17, 18, 19, 6, 23, 24, 25, 26, 10, 30, 31, 32, 33, 14, 16, 39, 40, 41, 42, 20, 22, 48, 49, 50, 51

Your challenge is given a number (i) output the i'th item in that sequence. i is zero based. Shortest code wins.

Answer 28

The quitting log-in

This program relies on the user pressing Ctrl + C at specified times to show him the secret message (the secret message is just m to avoid polluting the byte count with un-avoidable chars).

Given a 3 digit enter code that may be specified anywhere (just give directions to find it inside your source code) let the user see the message if he quits at the n-th (1-indexed, zero may never be present in the pass-code) ? each time.

The user should press Enter to get to the next question.

If the user does not press <Control-C>, nine successive prompts should be shown.

Given a code 523

?
?
?
?
? <Control-C>
?
? <Control-C>
?
?
? <Control-C>
m

Given a code 123

?
?
? <Control-C>
? <Control-C>
? <Control-C>

Answer 29

Queuing queues

I recently found a great site, Dubtrack, for all my music needs. However, it features a very interesting method of ordering, which contains a queue of users, and each user has their own personal queue.

The user queue loops through each of the users that have songs, and plays the top song from their individual queue. This means that:

1. When there is a single user, it simply plays the songs in the order that user added them.
2. When there are multiple users, it interleaves the songs.

However, users' queues aren't always filled, and when a user adds his first song to the queue, the user is added to the end of the user queue.

For example, say there were 3 users each with the following queues (at time 0):

0 [1,10,100,1000]
0 [2,20]
0 [3,30,300]

then the resulting playlist would look like:

[1, 2, 3, 10, 20, 30, 100, 300, 1000]

However, if a user were to add his queue during the 4th song:

0 [1,10,100,1000]
0 [2,20]
0 [3,30,300]
3 [4,40,400,4000]

Then the playlist would look like

                      v New user's song finally plays
[1, 2, 3, 10, 20, 30, 4, 100, 300, 400, 1000, 400, 4000]
          ^ New user added here, but user 2 and 3 are still in front

Your challenge is to take a list of queues and join times, and return them in single playlist. You are guaranteed that there will be at least 1 queue at time 0, and that additional users won't be added after all the songs have played.

Test cases

Input
0 [1,5,3,7,2,6,3]
Output
[1,5,3,7,2,6,3]

Input
1 [3,6,9,12]
0 [4,10]
Output
[4,10,3,6,9,12]

Input    
0 [1,10,100,1000]
0 [2,20]
0 [3,30,300]
3 [4,40,400,4000]
Output
[1,2,3,10,20,30,4,100,300,400,1000,400,4000]

Input
11 [3000]
3 [6,8,10,11,0]
5 [4,100,14,12,0]
0 [0,1,2,3,4,5]
11 [2000]
Output
[0,1,2,3,6,4,8,4,5,10,100,11,14,3000,2000,0,12,0]

Answer 30

Natural Language Calculator

code-golf

Background

You are working at Wolfram Alpha, when a big fire occurs, wiping out much of the hardware infrastructure, losing much of the code. Now you are assigned to the natural language team working on writing new code for converting natural language to mathematical expressions to be evaluated. You must parse the following commands and even do mixed commands!

Challenge

The input will be a string, obviously. For multiple operations, there will be commands within input of commands.

Pi and e are simply inputted as "pi" and "e". Other special numbers are not needed to be handled.

Parse the following commands:

• Add x and y
• Subtract x and y
• Multiply x and y
• Divide x and y
• Factorial of x
• x factorial
• Exponent base n of x
• Log base n of x
• Natural log of x

You must deal with it case-insensitively. For example "5 Factorial" gives the same result ad "5 factorial" or "5 FAcTorial".

Testcases

> "Add 4 and 5"
9
> "Multiply 6 and 10"
60
> "Divide 144 and 12"
12
> Exponent base 10 of 3
1000
> 3 factorial
6
> 3
> Add 5 factorial and 2
122
> Exponent base e of natural log of e
e
> natural log of e
1