perlmeditation tadman Since my [id://82512|former attempt] at proposing a Golf was a dismal failure, for a refereshing change, how about something that isn't <A HREF="http://hissa.nist.gov/dads/HTML/npcomplete.html">NP-Complete</A>? This particular function, as with any Perl Golf, should allow for suitable creative expression. TMTOWTDI as always. <BR> <BR> <B>The Goal</B> <BR> Create a function which when given a numeric string, returns a multi-line string which is the equivalent 7-segment display output, as one might find on a cash register or digital watch. No external modules should be used. No requirement for compatibility with 'strict' or '-w', but the function must operate properly if called more than one time from within the same program. <BR> <BR> <READMORE> An example is: <CODE>print f("19.2"); </CODE> Which would display: <CODE> X XXXX XXXX X X X X X X X X X XXXX XXXX X X X X X X X X X XXXX </CODE> Any combination of the characters 0-9, '-', or '.' are valid. Any other characters are ignored. 7 lines of text are always returned by the function, though these lines may be blank if no input was provided that was valid. <BR> <BR> For reference, here is the complete character set, a 5x7 bitmap, with a ruler provided for reference purposes only: <CODE> ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- | XXXX X XXXX XXXX X X XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX | X X X X X X X X X X X X X X | X X X X X X X X X X X X X X | X X X XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX X XXXX XXXX XXXX | X X X X X X X X X X X X X | X X X X X X X X X X X X X | XXXX X XXXX XXXX X XXXX XXXX X XXXX XXXX X </CODE> <B>Sample Code</B><BR> My first take, a straight up approach, which is 272 characters without line breaks required here for readability. <CODE>sub f{ my@c=qw[00700 00001 00000 75557 11111 71747 71717 55711 74717 74757 71111 75757 75717]; my@l,$i;map{$l[$i++%5].=join'',(unpack("B8" ,chr)=~/(.)(.)(.)$/)[0,1,1,2],' '}map{split //,$c[ord($_)-45]}grep{/[0-9\.\-]/}split//, pop;$_=join'',map{"$_\n"}@l[0,1,1,2,3,3,4]; tr/01/ X/;$_ } </CODE> As you can see, there is substantial room for improvement.