code-golf

In response to this question asking about hex to (raw) binary conversion, a comment suggested that it could be solved in "5-10 lines of C, or any other language." I'm sure that for (some) scripting languages that could be achieved, and would like to see how. Can we prove that comment true, for C, too? NB: this doesn't mean hex to ASCII binary - specifically the output should be a raw octet stream corresponding to the input ASCII hex. Also, the input parser should skip/ignore white space. edit (by Brian Campbell) May I propose the following rules, for consistency? Feel free to edit or delete

I found a site with some complicated C puzzles. Right now I'm dealing with this: The following is a piece of C code, whose intention was to print a minus sign 20 times. But you can notice that, it doesn't work. #include <stdio.h> int main() { int i; int n = 20; for( i = 0; i < n; i-- ) printf("-"); return 0; } Well fixing the above code is straight-forward. To make the problem interesting, you have to fix the above code, by changing exactly one character. There are three known solutions. See if you can get all those three. I cannot figure out how to solve. I know that it can be fixed by

Generate a list of lists (or print, I don't mind) a Pascal's Triangle of size N with the least lines of code possible! Here goes my attempt (118 characters in python 2.6 using a trick ): c,z,k=locals,[0],'_[1]' p=lambda n:[len(c()[k])and map(sum,zip(z+c()[k][-1],c()[k][-1]+z))or[1]for _ in range(n)] Explanation: the first element of the list comprehension (when the length is 0) is [1] the next elements are obtained the following way: take the previous list and make two lists, one padded with a 0 at the beginning and the other at the end. e.g. for the 2nd step, we take [1] and make [0,1] and [1

Challenge Here is the task, inspired by the well-known British TV game show Countdown . The challenge should be pretty clear even without any knowledge of the game, but feel free to ask for clarifications. And if you fancy seeing a clip of this game in action, check out this YouTube clip . It features the wonderful late Richard Whitely in 1997. You are given 6 numbers, chosen at random from the set {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 25, 50, 75, 100}, and a random target number between 100 and 999. The aim is to use the six given numbers and the four common arithmetic operations (addition,

The challenge The shortest code by character count to input a 2D representation of a board, and output 'true' or 'false' according to the input . The board is made out of 4 types of tiles: # - A solid wall x - The target the laser has to hit / or \ - Mirrors pointing to a direction (depends on laser direction) v, ^, > or < - The laser pointing to a direction (down, up, right and left respectively) There is only one laser and only one target . Walls must form a solid rectangle of any size, where the laser and target are placed inside. Walls inside the 'room' are possible. Laser ray shots and

The challenge The shortest code by character count that will output the numeric equivalent of an Excel column string. For example, the A column is 1, B is 2, so on and so forth. Once you hit Z , the next column becomes AA , then AB and so on. Test cases: A: 1 B: 2 AD: 30 ABC: 731 WTF: 16074 ROFL: 326676 Code count includes input/output (i.e full program). David Perl, 36 34 33 31 30 17 15 11 characters $_=()=A..$_ Usage: $ echo -n WTF | perl -ple '$_=()=A..$_' 16074 Reduced to 17 by using echo -n to avoid a chop call. Reduced to 15 by using say instead of print. Reduced to 11 by using -p

So I got asked today what was the best way to find the closes match within a collection. For example, you've got an array like this: 1, 3, 8, 10, 13, ... What number is closest to 4? Collection is numerical, unordered and can be anything. Same with the number to match. Lets see what we can come up with, from the various languages of choice. Jimmy 11 bytes in J: C=:0{]/:|@- Examples: >> a =: 1 3 8 10 13 >> 4 C a 3 >> 11 C a 10 >> 12 C a 13 my breakdown for the layman: 0{ First element of ] the right argument /: sorted by | absolute value @ of - subtraction Shorter Python: 41 chars f=lambda a,l