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Comments on Parsing numbers from a text file

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Parsing numbers from a text file

+3
−0

This is my solution to the first task of the Advent of Code 2023.

The task description is:

On each line, the calibration value can be found by combining the first digit and the last digit (in that order) to form a single two-digit number.

For example:

1abc2
pqr3stu8vwx
a1b2c3d4e5f
treb7uchet

In this example, the calibration values of these four lines are 12, 38, 15, and 77. Adding these together produces 142.

Consider your entire calibration document. What is the sum of all of the calibration values?

Here is my solution, which provides the correct sum (at least I passed the task):

use std::fs::read_to_string;
use regex::Regex;

fn main() {
    let re = Regex::new(r"^[\D]*(\d)(|.*(\d))\D*$").unwrap();
    let mut sum: u32 = 0;

    for line in read_to_string("calibration_data.txt").unwrap().lines() {
        println!("{line}");
        let Some(caps) = re.captures(line) else {
            panic!("no match! in line {line}");
        };
        let first: &str = &caps.get(1).map_or("0", |m| m.as_str());
        let second: &str = &caps.get(3).map_or(first, |m| m.as_str());
        let mut compound: String = String::new();
        compound.push_str(first);
        compound.push_str(second);
        println!("{first} + {second} = {compound}");
        let compound: u32 = compound.parse().unwrap();
        sum += compound;
    }

    println!("***********************");
    println!("Calibration sum: {sum}");
    println!("***********************");
}

Is there any way I could have done this better, especially regarding the extraction of the numbers from the text lines?

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Real problem size (3 comments)
Post
+4
−1

You don't need a regex for this. To find first you can simply iterate through the line until you find a digit. To find second you can do the same but in reverse. This is more efficient than running a regex.

For a problem as small as the example, it doesn't matter and arguably the regex adds readability. But I assume AoC makes you run this on a much bigger input as well.

You also don't need to construct the calibration number as a string. first*10 + second gives the calibration number.

When finding the digits, you can do a time-space tradeoff by creating a hashmap that maps each char 0-9 to the corresponding digit. Plugging the chars into this map is probably faster than parsing the string to an integer.

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1 comment thread

Not so sure about last paragraph. (3 comments)
Not so sure about last paragraph.
Olin Lathrop‭ wrote 4 months ago

You already have the digit character since that's how you detected it in the first place. Subtracting the character code for "0" seems pretty fast and simple to me.

Skipping 3 deleted comments.

Alexei‭ wrote 4 months ago

Some comments were removed.

Please use comments to provide feedback about the post (e.g. suggest improvements, note possible pitfalls or performance issues, request to clarify some aspects).

Please do not use the post comments to refer to other aspects, such as the general activity of a certain user. Also, do not use derogatory terms in the comments.

matthewsnyder‭ wrote 4 months ago

Since the comments have been cleaned up, I can now respond as follows:

Doing low-level arithmetic with the character codes might indeed be slightly faster. However, since the speed up is only a constant factor and does not affect algorithmic complexity I personally find it uninteresting here. I think my suggestion of using a hashmap is more versatile and more interesting to learn because it can be applied to more situation than just digits nor does it depend on the character codes correlating with the digit values.

For this reason, I would consider this point as a "footnote", and I think leaving it as a comment rather than editing the answer is better for the reader.