Part 1

Santa is delivering presents to an infinite two-dimensional grid of houses.

He begins by delivering a present to the house at his starting location, and then an elf at the North Pole calls him via radio and tells him where to move next. Moves are always exactly one house to the north (^), south (v), east (>), or west (<). After each move, he delivers another present to the house at his new location.

However, the elf back at the north pole has had a little too much eggnog, and so his directions are a little off, and Santa ends up visiting some houses more than once. How many houses receive at least one present?

For example:

> delivers presents to 2 houses: one at the starting location, and one to the east.
^>v< delivers presents to 4 houses in a square, including twice to the house at his starting/ending location.
^v^v^v^v^v delivers a bunch of presents to some very lucky children at only 2 houses.

In [29]:
function getUniqLocs(directions)
    Moves = [1 0 ; -1 0 ; 0 1 ; 0 -1]
    #MoveList = [Moves[search("^v<>",x),:] for x in collect(directions)]
    MoveList = map(x -> Moves[search("^v<>",x),:], collect(directions))
    Loc = [0 0]
    Locs = Set{Tuple}([tuple(Loc...)])
    for move in MoveList
        Loc += move
        push!(Locs, tuple(Loc...))
    end
    return Locs
end


Out[29]:
getUniqLocs (generic function with 1 method)

In [30]:
Directions = readall("advent03_input.txt")
@time length(getUniqLocs(Directions))


  
Out[30]:
2592
0.095239 seconds (96.06 k allocations: 4.262 MB)

Thomas Lopdell


In [27]:
function move( instr::Char, pos::Tuple{Int64,Int64} )
        (x,y) = pos
        if instr == '^'
            return (x,y-1)
        elseif instr == 'v'
            return (x,y+1)
        elseif instr == '<'
            return (x-1,y)
        elseif instr == '>'
            return (x+1,y)
        else
            error( @sprintf "%c is not a valid movement"  instr )
        end
end

function visit( instructions::ASCIIString )
        currentPos = (0,0)
        visitedLocations = Dict{Tuple{Int64,Int64},Int64}( currentPos => 1 )

        for instr in instructions
                newPos = move(instr, currentPos)

                if haskey(visitedLocations, newPos)
                        visitedLocations[newPos] += 1
                else
                        visitedLocations[newPos] = 1
                end

                currentPos = newPos
        end

        return visitedLocations
end


Out[27]:
visit (generic function with 1 method)

In [28]:
f = open("advent03_input.txt")
instructions = chomp(readline(f))
close(f)

#visits = visit(instructions)
@time numHouses = length(keys(visit(instructions)))


  
Out[28]:
2592
0.063872 seconds (11.69 k allocations: 653.873 KB)

Part 2

The next year, to speed up the process, Santa creates a robot version of himself, Robo-Santa, to deliver presents with him.

Santa and Robo-Santa start at the same location (delivering two presents to the same starting house), then take turns moving based on instructions from the elf, who is eggnoggedly reading from the same script as the previous year.

This year, how many houses receive at least one present?

For example:

^v delivers presents to 3 houses, because Santa goes north, and then Robo-Santa goes south.
^>v< now delivers presents to 3 houses, and Santa and Robo-Santa end up back where they started.
^v^v^v^v^v now delivers presents to 11 houses, with Santa going one direction and Robo-Santa going the other.

In [23]:
function countRoboSantaLocs(directions)
    SantaLocs = getUniqLocs(directions[1:2:end])
    RoboLocs = getUniqLocs(directions[2:2:end])
    length(union(SantaLocs,RoboLocs))
end


Out[23]:
countRoboSantaLocs (generic function with 1 method)

In [32]:
@time countRoboSantaLocs(Directions)


  
Out[32]:
2360
0.055811 seconds (102.68 k allocations: 4.334 MB)

Thomas Lopdell


In [17]:
function visitWithRobot( instructions::ASCIIString )
        currentPos = (0,0)
        robotPos = (0,0)
        visitedLocations = Dict{Tuple{Int64,Int64},Int64}( currentPos => 2 )

        for pair in enumerate(instructions)
                (ind, instr) = pair

                if ind % 2 == 1
                        # Move santa
                        currentPos = move(instr, currentPos)

                        if haskey(visitedLocations, currentPos)
                                visitedLocations[currentPos] += 1
                        else
                                visitedLocations[currentPos] = 1
                        end
                else
                        # Move robo-santa
                        robotPos = move(instr, robotPos)

                        if haskey(visitedLocations, robotPos)
                                visitedLocations[robotPos] += 1
                        else
                                visitedLocations[robotPos] = 1
                        end
                end

        end

        return visitedLocations

end


Out[17]:
visitWithRobot (generic function with 1 method)

In [31]:
### Part 2
#visitsWithRobot = visitWithRobot(instructions)
@time numHousesWithRobot = length(keys(visitWithRobot(instructions)))

@printf "Part One: %d\nPart Two: %d\n"  numHouses  numHousesWithRobot


  0.001050 seconds (44 allocations: 135.078 KB)
Part One: 2592
Part Two: 2360