Re: (Golf) Minimizing the Bacon Number

[no_slogan]

in reply to (Golf) Minimizing the Bacon Number

Down to 97 characters. Works for arbitrary graphs, i think.

sub b {
$a=@_*@_;for(@_){%t=@_;$t=@r=$_;$t+=%t while@r=map@{delete$t{$_}},@r;$
+a=$t,$b=$_ if!ref&&$t<$a}$b
}

Update: Thanks to MeowChow for crawling through that thoroughly fetid blob of code and discovering that I need to say $t+=keys%t instead of $t+=%t. And here I thought I was being so clever.

[MeowChow]

Interestingly, this causes both my 5.6 Win32 ActiveState Perl and my 5.6.1 Linux to segfault, but appears to work under 5.00503. Hmmm....

update: I think this is a garbage-collection issue, stemming from your deletion of a hash key will simultaneously dereferencing it. Ingenious, and dangerous.

update2: Err, that wasn't the problem, the problem was that my test hash was already %t, so it was getting reset inside the sub, and I ran into this.

   MeowChow                                   
               s aamecha.s a..a\u$&owag.print