Re:Advent of Code 2023 is nigh
by AdamH12113 on Friday December 01, 2023 @12:55PM
(#38489831)
It could have been more clear. The wording from the problem is "the last digit on each line". To me, that pretty clearly implies "the rightmost substring containing a digit", but I guess I can see how someone could question that interpretation.
I think it strongly implies a direction with the example in part 1 where there's only a single digit resulting in "77" rather than "7".
Re:Advent of Code 2023 is nigh
by philomath_mn on Friday December 01, 2023 @02:10PM
(#38490854)
Right, but we read the word "eight" from left to right -- to me it is non-obvious that "eightwo" should be counted as two digits when (a) there aren't enough characters to actually make both digits and (b) there wasn't a single example showing this overlap expanded
But I suppose can see the other side as well: the wording makes it sound like any spellings of those digits _counts_ as a digit rather than should be _replaced_ by a digit.
However I think the ambiguity here made the puzzle more difficult in a non-fun way.
Meaning:
- eightwothree -> 823 (answer 83)
- 4nineeightseven2 -> 49872 (answer 42)
- zoneight234 -> z18234 (answer 14)
I interpreted the instructions as saying to take the first match from the left and not count the overlaps.
Unfortunately this gives the same answer as the overlap interpretation on the examples given in the problem statement: all the overlaps occurred in the middle where they didn't matter.
If they had shown
oneight -> answer: 18
then I would have understood the spec.