Advent of Code 2022
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Let’s use the Advent of Code 2022, a series of programming challenges of increasing difficulty, to learn more about the Rust programming language.
Series overview
1. Day 1 (Advent of Code 2022)
Two years ago, I did part of Advent of Code 2020 using the Rust language. It was a lot of fun, so let’s try it again!
The problem statement
Our input looks something like this:
1000
2000
3000
4000
5000
6000
7000
8000
9000
10000
Each group of lines separated by an empty line is a list of food items an elf is carrying: each line corresponds to the number of calories in that food.
2. Day 2 (Advent of Code 2022)
Part 1
In the day 2 challenge, we’re playing Rock Papers Scissors.
We’re given a strategy guide like so:
A Y
B X
C Z
Left column is “their move”: A means Rock, B means Paper, C means Scissors. Right column is “our move”: X means Rock, Y means Paper, Z means Scissors.
Each line corresponds to a turn, and we must calculate the total score we get. Picking “Rock” gives 1 point, “Paper” gives 2 points, and “Scissors” gives 3. Losing the round gives 0 points, drawing gives 3, winning it gives 6.
3. Day 3 (Advent of Code 2022)
Part 1
I’m not sure where the day 3 challenge is going, because the problem statement for the first part is kinda convoluted.
As usual we have an input, like this:
vJrwpWtwJgWrhcsFMMfFFhFp
jqHRNqRjqzjGDLGLrsFMfFZSrLrFZsSL
PmmdzqPrVvPwwTWBwg
wMqvLMZHhHMvwLHjbvcjnnSBnvTQFn
ttgJtRGJQctTZtZT
CrZsJsPPZsGzwwsLwLmpwMDw
Each line represents the contents of a “rucksack”, divided in two halves (which are called “compartments”), so for line 1:
4. Day 4 (Advent of Code 2022)
Part 1
Let’s tackle the day 4 challenge!
In this one, we get an input like this:
2-4,6-8
2-3,4-5
5-7,7-9
2-8,3-7
6-6,4-6
2-6,4-8
Each line has two ranges: the first line has ranges containing 2, 3, 4, and 6, 7, 8. We must count how many pairs have ranges where one fully contains the other.
In Rust, we can express this with “inclusive ranges”
(std::ops::RangeInclusive),
and those implement Iterator, so we can do:
5. Day 5 (Advent of Code 2022)
Part 1
The day 5 challenge actually looks fun!
Our input looks like this:
[D]
[N] [C]
[Z] [M] [P]
1 2 3
move 1 from 2 to 1
move 3 from 1 to 3
move 2 from 2 to 1
move 1 from 1 to 2
Which is a visual representation of stacks, and so, for once, we have some serious parsing to do, and that means I finally have a good reason to bust out the nom crate.
6. Day 6 (Advent of Code 2022)
Today I am joining you from the relative discomfort of my living room (since my better half has commandeered the home office due to Way Too Many Calls) to tackle the day 6 challenge, which I’m excited about: maybe despite, maybe because of, the low-grade fever I’m under.
Part 1
Our input is a jumble of letters, and we’re supposed to find the position of the first substring that’s “four different characters”.
7. Day 7 (Advent of Code 2022)
The day 7 challenge talks about trees! File trees that is.
The temptation to solve it before starting to write this article so I don’t look silly is high, but I’m explicitly not doing so, so that we can bang our collective heads against any walls at the same time, and see how we can get out of it! Trees are serious business!
Part 1
The sample input looks like this:
8. Day 8 (Advent of Code 2022)
In the day 8 problem, our input is a height map:
30373
25512
65332
33549
35390
This is a 5x5 grid, and every number denotes the height of a tree. For part 1, we must find out how many trees are visible from the outside of the grid.
If we consider the first row, from the left: only the 3 is visible: it
obscures the 0. From the right, 3 and 7 are visible.
9. Day 9 (Advent of Code 2022)
The Advent of Code is not a sprint: it’s a marathon: sometimes you’ve got to stop and smell the roses.
I… what? That’s not.. have you done a marathon before?
No, and I haven’t taken any creative writing classes either, I think you can tell. Anyway: Day 8 was a bit aggravating for me. In 2020 I gave up AoC after Day 14 I think, and then I skipped a year. It doesn’t help that it overlaps some holidays and stuff, but!
10. Day 10 (Advent of Code 2022)
Onwards! To the day 10 puzzle.
I don’t see a way to make part 1 especially fun — so let’s just get to it.
Parsing
As usual, let’s reach for the nom crate…
$ cargo add nom@7
(cut)
…to parse the input into nicely-organized Rust data structures:
// in `src/main.rs`
use nom::{
branch::alt,
bytes::complete::tag,
combinator::{map, value},
sequence::preceded,
IResult,
};
#[derive(Debug, Clone, Copy, PartialEq, Eq, Hash)]
enum Instruction {
Noop,
Addx(i32),
}
impl Instruction {
fn parse(i: &str) -> IResult<&str, Self> {
let noop = tag("noop");
let addx = preceded(tag("addx "), nom::character::complete::i32);
alt((value(Self::Noop, noop), map(addx, Self::Addx)))(i)
}
fn cycles(self) -> u32 {
match self {
Self::Noop => 1,
Self::Addx(_) => 2,
}
}
}
11. Day 11 (Advent of Code 2022)
It’s a new day, it’s a new advent of code puzzle.
In that one, we have to apparently cosplay as an IBM mainframe and just.. crunch them numbers. This doesn’t look fun, and I can’t think of a clever twist to make it fun, so let’s try to make it short and sweet.
Parsing
Our input looks like this:
Monkey 0:
Starting items: 79, 98
Operation: new = old * 19
Test: divisible by 23
If true: throw to monkey 2
If false: throw to monkey 3
Monkey 1:
Starting items: 54, 65, 75, 74
Operation: new = old + 6
Test: divisible by 19
If true: throw to monkey 2
If false: throw to monkey 0
(etc)
12. Day 12 (Advent of Code 2022)
Alright! The day 12 puzzle involves path finding, and it seems like a good time to lean more heavily on the WASM embeds I’ve set up for the previous parts.
Let’s start by setting up the types we’ll want!
Types and parsing
Our input is a heightmap, like so:
Sabqponm
abcryxxl
accszExk
acctuvwj
abdefghi
Where 'a'..='z' is a square with a given elevation (from lowest to highest),
S is the start, and E is the end.
13. Day 13 (Advent of Code 2022)
The day 13 puzzle needs a speech therapist.
???
…because it has an awful lisp!! Ahhhahahahhhh
Are you ok? What is.. what is going on with you?
No but seriously we have what are ostensibly S-expressions, except they use JSON-adjacent notation:
[1,1,3,1,1]
[1,1,5,1,1]
[[1],[2,3,4]]
[[1],4]
[9]
[[8,7,6]]
[[4,4],4,4]
[[4,4],4,4,4]
[7,7,7,7]
[7,7,7]
[]
[3]
[[[]]]
[[]]
[1,[2,[3,[4,[5,6,7]]]],8,9]
[1,[2,[3,[4,[5,6,0]]]],8,9]
14. Day 14 (Advent of Code 2022)
I like how the day 14 puzzle sounds, because I think it’ll give me an opportunity to show off yet another way to have Rust embedded in a web page.
But first…
Let me guess: parsing?
You bet your furry ass, parsing.
Parsing
The input looks something like this:
498,4 -> 498,6 -> 496,6
503,4 -> 502,4 -> 502,9 -> 494,9
And each line is essentially… a polyline: we’re supposed to draw lines between every point on the path, and that determines rocks on the map.
15. Day 15 (Advent of Code 2022)
The day 15 puzzle falls into the “math puzzle” territory more than “let’s learn something new about Rust”, but since several folks asked if I was going to continue… let’s continue.
The sample input is as follows:
Sensor at x=2, y=18: closest beacon is at x=-2, y=15
Sensor at x=9, y=16: closest beacon is at x=10, y=16
Sensor at x=13, y=2: closest beacon is at x=15, y=3
Sensor at x=12, y=14: closest beacon is at x=10, y=16
Sensor at x=10, y=20: closest beacon is at x=10, y=16
Sensor at x=14, y=17: closest beacon is at x=10, y=16
Sensor at x=8, y=7: closest beacon is at x=2, y=10
Sensor at x=2, y=0: closest beacon is at x=2, y=10
Sensor at x=0, y=11: closest beacon is at x=2, y=10
Sensor at x=20, y=14: closest beacon is at x=25, y=17
Sensor at x=17, y=20: closest beacon is at x=21, y=22
Sensor at x=16, y=7: closest beacon is at x=15, y=3
Sensor at x=14, y=3: closest beacon is at x=15, y=3
Sensor at x=20, y=1: closest beacon is at x=15, y=3
16. Day 16 (Advent of Code 2022)
Let’s tackle the day 16 puzzle!
Parsing
The input looks like this:
Valve AA has flow rate=0; tunnels lead to valves DD, II, BB
Valve BB has flow rate=13; tunnels lead to valves CC, AA
Valve CC has flow rate=2; tunnels lead to valves DD, BB
Valve DD has flow rate=20; tunnels lead to valves CC, AA, EE
Valve EE has flow rate=3; tunnels lead to valves FF, DD
Valve FF has flow rate=0; tunnels lead to valves EE, GG
Valve GG has flow rate=0; tunnels lead to valves FF, HH
Valve HH has flow rate=22; tunnel leads to valve GG
Valve II has flow rate=0; tunnels lead to valves AA, JJ
Valve JJ has flow rate=21; tunnel leads to valve II
17. Day 17 (Advent of Code 2022)
Advent of Code gets harder and harder, and I’m not getting any smarter. Or any more free time. So, in order to close out this series anyway, I’m going to try and port other people’s solutions from “language X” to Rust. That way, they already figured out the hard stuff, and we can just focus on the Rust bits!
Sounds good? Good. Let’s proceed.
18. Day 18 (Advent of Code 2022)
This time around, we’re porting a solution from C++ to Rust and seeing how it feels, how it performs, and what we can learn about both languages by doing that.
See Day 17 for the rationale re: porting solutions rather than writing my own from scratch. TL;DR is: it’s better than nothing, and we can still focus about learning Rust rather than spending entire days fighting off-by-one errors.
This series is complete.