http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=185649

We're golfing in the cube farm today, I'm writing Perl code and my adversary is writing PHP. So far he's got me by one character on this one, but I can't see how I can make it any shorter.

The program must take a file name from the command line and return the number of characters in the file. Not the most ambitious requirements in the world for sure :). A newline at the end of the program output is required.

It would be nice if I could (get help) figuring out a way to restore Perl's bragging rights...


print((stat pop)[7],$/)

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Golfing on a quiet Friday afternoon...
by japhy (Canon) on Jul 26, 2002 at 20:18 UTC
    Some evolution for you: 
    #2345678901234567890123
print((stat pop)[7],$/)  # 23
print+(stat pop)[7],$/   # 22
print+(-s pop),$/        # 17
print-s pop,$/           # 14

    [download]
    Ta da. 14.

    _____________________________________________________
    Jeff[japhy]Pinyan: Perl, regex, and perl hacker, who'd like a job (NYC-area)
    s++=END;++y(;-P)}y js++=;shajsj<++y(p-q)}?print:??;

[reply]
[d/l]
      you missed one...

      #23456789012
die-s pop,$/

      [download]

      ~Particle *accelerates*

[reply]
[d/l]
[select]

      I'm very new to golf and don't know the ground rules and was amazed by hans_moleman's solution and simply blown away by japhy's evolution, but.... (/me hear's the groans)...trying japhy's final answer on my win32 (that has -w permenantly enabled) system I got: 

      C:\test>185653 185653.pl
16Use of uninitialized value in print at C:\test\185653.pl line 1.

C:\test>

      [download]

      Ignoring the warning which I could turn off, I noticed that it reports its own length (under win32 etc. etc) as 16!

      So, I played and came up with this, which (on my Wi...) does a little better and (visually at least :) complies with the 'rules'

      (I see a newline after the number :),

      and beats japhy's by 3!...and runs with -w and no errors! 

      C:\test>185649 185649.pl
13
C:\test>

      [download]

      And the code 

      C:\test>type 185649.pl
print-s pop

C:\test>

      [download]

      As an aside, in a unicode world, maybe the requirements should have been "number of bytes"?

[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
        Ahh, certainly this is cheating BrowserUk {grin}.

        The version of emulated DOS on your Win32 system always places new command prompt on a separate line by itself. So, even if your perl script prints just '13' without a terminating '\n', DOS would do the job for you.

        However, for a Unix system I can't see how one could go shorter than just: 
        #12345678901234
 print-s pop,$/

        [download]
        Which is 14 characters.

        Surely, had japhy considered writing his golf for DOS, then the ',$/' part would be dropped thereby reducing the golf even further by 3 characters as you've pointed out ;-)

        Update: To clarify, the word 'cheating' should be considered a sarcasm ;^). I didn't mean to sound offending. I very much respect BrowserUk's comment and have nothing against him pointing out the intimate features of perl running on various non *nix systems. I simply felt it would be worthwhile to also direct your attention to the minor difference in running the golf piece on Win32 and Unix systems.

        _____________________ 
        # Under Construction

        [download]
[reply]
[d/l]
[select]

      Thanks! very enlightening.

[reply]
Re: Golfing on a quiet Friday afternoon...
by Chmrr (Vicar) on Jul 26, 2002 at 21:59 UTC

    If you really do mean characters, not bytes, check out this recent thread.

    perl -pe '"I lo*`+$^X$\"$]!$/"=~m%(.*)%s;$_=$1;y^`+*^e v^#$&V"+@( NO CARRIER'

[reply]

Back to Meditations