Day 11: Plutonian Pebbles
Megathread guidelines
- Keep top level comments as only solutions, if you want to say something other than a solution put it in a new post. (replies to comments can be whatever)
- You can send code in code blocks by using three backticks, the code, and then three backticks or use something such as https://topaz.github.io/paste/ if you prefer sending it through a URL
FAQ
- What is this?: Here is a post with a large amount of details: https://programming.dev/post/6637268
- Where do I participate?: https://adventofcode.com/
- Is there a leaderboard for the community?: We have a programming.dev leaderboard with the info on how to join in this post: https://programming.dev/post/6631465
And now we get into the days where caching really is king. My first attempt didn’t go so well, I tried to handle the full list result as one cache step, instead of individually caching the result of calculating each stone per step.
I think my original attempt is still calculating at home, but I finished up this much better version on the trip to work.
All hail public transport.
C#
List<long> stones = new List<long>(); public void Input(IEnumerable<string> lines) { stones = string.Concat(lines).Split(' ').Select(v => long.Parse(v)).ToList(); } public void Part1() { var expanded = TryExpand(stones, 25); Console.WriteLine($"Stones: {expanded}"); } public void Part2() { var expanded = TryExpand(stones, 75); Console.WriteLine($"Stones: {expanded}"); } public long TryExpand(IEnumerable<long> stones, int steps) { if (steps == 0) return stones.Count(); return stones.Select(s => TryExpand(s, steps)).Sum(); } Dictionary<(long, int), long> cache = new Dictionary<(long, int), long>(); public long TryExpand(long stone, int steps) { var key = (stone, steps); if (cache.ContainsKey(key)) return cache[key]; var result = TryExpand(Blink(stone), steps - 1); cache[key] = result; return result; } public IEnumerable<long> Blink(long stone) { if (stone == 0) { yield return 1; yield break; } var str = stone.ToString(); if (str.Length % 2 == 0) { yield return long.Parse(str[..(str.Length / 2)]); yield return long.Parse(str[(str.Length / 2)..]); yield break; } yield return stone * 2024; }