The Nineteenth Byte

4:48 AM

I don't care about it as long as I've posted.

Q: Computing a specific coefficient in a quotient of polynomials

7:32 AM

0

Context After "Computing a specific coefficient in a product of polynomials", asking you to compute a specific coefficient of polynomial multiplication, I wish to create a "mirror" challenge, asking you to compute a specific coefficient from polynomial division. Polynomial division Let us esta...

code-golf math integer polynomials

Cool, 9 users in the chatroom. Let's see if we can get it down to 5.

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

7:46 AM

CMC: Try to make a CMC that uses up as many tags on the site as possible, without using a tag that has sub-tags. (that means math isn't a valid tag, because it has various sub-tags, e.g. integer or arithmetic). Your CMC has to obey the description specified in the tag. Synonym tags don't count as different tags. Your submission's score is how many tags you reasonably include under your challenge divided by the number of answers to your CMC challenge(i.e.tags/answers).

Rules: For this specific CMC, you aren't allowed to answer your own CMC. In addition, CMC's don't have tag limitations, so it is allowed to post a CMC with more than 5 tags.

New Sandboxed Posts

9:43 AM

0

Shift the letters, soldier ! codegolfstring Context We're at war! You need to transfert an important message to your general to inform him from an imminent assault. The thing is, your enemy knows a lot about cryptography : you will need to be more creative in order to encode your message... T...

Anush

hi all

@a'_' the chatroom is so quiet I don't think CMC's are being answered any more :(

@a'_' remind me.. how do you see how many users there are in the chatroom?

it says "There are other rooms, with 58 users currently talking in 51 rooms." which seems pretty dead all round!

you would have thought with coronavirus people would want to spend more time online :)

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

11:56 AM

@Anush Look at the logs of the chatroom. Check out the "join ?? users in the chatroom" button. Logs: chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/53635425#53635425

I've forgot... I just look at the Users tab for the analysis

New Sandboxed Posts

0

How many strings within the character classes code-golf string combinatorics Task Given a string composed of ASCII printable characters, return how many strings could fit the given pattern with character literals and regex-like ranges. Pattern string The pattern string follows this grammar: ...

New Meta Posts

1:20 PM

0

Q: Why is this question not yet reopen?

I asked this question, and it was closed because I did not clarify what I meant by the word "randomly". Now I've clarified it but it is not reopened. What is wrong with it now?

discussion close-reasons closed-questions reopening

2:35 PM

0

Q: Is it really time?

A time in the format hhMMss is represented by six numbers in the range 0..9 (e.g.100203 for 3 minutes after 2 minutes after 10am (10:02.03), or 155603 for three seconds after 56 minutes after 3pm (15:56.03). Treating these times as integers, these numbers are therefore in the range 000000 to 235...

code-golf string date

3:59 PM

Any big sql server fans in here?

Anush

there is almost no one here at all!

Q: Interpretation of Truthy/Falsey

5:01 PM

@Poke I'm a SQL dba, most of the challenges I do are in t-sql.

Speaking of which, I came here to ask a meta question about output: once upon a time, there was a meta discussion about whether we could use "outputs one or more rows" as "truthy", and "outputs zero rows" as "falsey"

I think it was decided that was ok? Looking for the meta thread now...

Here's the meta truthy/falsey thread:

66

Quite a few code-golf questions require output to be "truthy or falsey". This is possibly confusing as these terms can possibly mean different things to different people, and especially in different languages. How should answers interpret the meaning of these terms? I'll provide a few possib...

discussion faq policy code-golf specification

I don't really see my question addressed directly, other than a vague "the program can state what represent truthy vs falsey, but that's almost a tautology

I think that I've used the "1 row is outputted" vs "0 rows are outputted" before, and nobody complained

Perhaps this meta questions is more on-point:

12

Q: Empty string as a truthy value

I will mainly speak about the programming language Lua, because that's where this question comes from. In Lua, everything but nil and false evaluates to true, it means that even 0 or an empty string are true. In the first case, there's no doubt about it: it's a truthy value as of PPCG's definiti...

discussion

The answer there is basically "sure, as long as it works consistently and unambiguously"

AdmBorkBork

5:58 PM

@BradC Most modern challenges (i.e., the past two years or so) allow submissions to define distinct and consistent values for output instead of literal truthy/falsey values. For example,

> Given an input number, x, output a distinct and consistent value if x is a congruent number, and a separate distinct and consistent value if x is not a congruent number. The output values do not necessarily need to be truthy/falsey in your language. (source)

Also relevant:

@PeterCordes Yes, that's intentional. People tend to complain a lot about truthy-vs-falsey challenges, so that's the best compromise I've come up with. — AdmBorkBork May 3 '19 at 12:54

@AdmBorkBork "distinct and consistent values for output..." That's my issue; is "the output dataset consists of 0 rows" an "output value"?

I mean, maybe I'm being overly pedantic to my own detriment

(I mean, I'd prefer if "0 rows" was allowed, at least in some challenges)

For example, here's my latest challenge entry:

0

A: Is it really time?

T-SQL, 64 bytes SELECT*FROM t WHERE 60>LEFT(RIGHT('000'+v,4),2)AND 60>RIGHT(v,2) Input is taken from pre-existing table t with varchar field v, per our input standards. Outputs 1 row (with the original value) for "true", and 0 rows for "false". Accepts only values in the specified range (0 t...

AdmBorkBork

I would say yes, that's allowed. Submissions can crash without outputting anything as a falsey value ...

If I'm forced to output real values, say 1 and 0 (or whatever), the best I can do is 66 bytes

@BradC Oh neat. Do you have any ideas/suggestions for updating from a mirrored database to an alwayson cluster?

with minimal downtime :\

If possible I'd love for it to not require code changes on the application side

not sure how feasible that is

@Poke That's probably a question for dba.stackexchange.com

6:12 PM

that's what i figured :P

I can't imagine you could do it with 0 downtime

You'd at least have to change the connection string on the applicaitno side

well like worst case you dual write all your data

that's true

i'm also updating sql versions

bleh

what a mess

@Poke sounds like it :)

Q: What's the shortest way to round up to the next integer in python?

9:21 PM

-1

What's the fastest way given a mathematical expression or value to always round up to the next integer if the result from the expression is not an integer. e.g. 5.0001 -> 6 66.4 -> 67 99.12391247298 -> 100 Here's a sample solution: -(-x//1) For any x value that is not an integer, it will...

code-challenge tips python

@NewMainPosts Looks like our friend "dicks dicks" is back

We must admire their commitment to the site.

Anush

:)

It looks like they've been trying to ask the same type of thing on SO on their various accounts, usually without success.

I suspect they are getting question banned or rate limited

Odd though. They already have the shortest solution. So what is it they want? It clearly takes some effort to write up these posts. The Language and formatting is meticulous.

Q: Impress Don Knuth by counting polyominoes on the hyperbolic plane

9:41 PM

0

This challenge is inspired by a talk about Schläfli symbols, etc that I gave in a Geometry seminar. While I was putting together this challenge, I saw that Don Knuth himself was interested in (some subset of) this problem. In October 2016, he commented on a related OEIS sequence: If [the OEIS...

code-golf geometry combinatorics polyomino

Here are their accounts:

https://stackexchange.com/users/17827658/dicks-dicks
https://stackexchange.com/users/17295098/gary-wayne
https://stackexchange.com/users/17126685/hay-hay-bun-bun
https://stackexchange.com/users/17824349/dr-suess-official
https://stackexchange.com/users/17829286/doctor-reality

So odd. They even take the time to find half-funny user names and matching images. Maybe they're just bored and have nothing better to do than bothering us.

I wish we had more users with this level of dedication and energy.