Forgot your password?

typodupeerror
Programming

+ - Can You Do The Regular Expression Crossword? ->

Submitted by mikejuk
mikejuk writes "Programmers often say that regular expressions are fun ... but now they can be a whole lot of fun in a completely new way. Want to try your hand at a regular expression crossword?
The idea is simple enough — create a crossword style puzzle with regular expressions are the "clues". In case you don't know what a regular expression is — it is a way of specifying what characters are allowed using wild-card characters and more. For example a dot matches any single character, an * any number of characters and so on.
The regular expression crossword is more a sort of Sudoku style puzzle than crossword however because the clues determine the pattern the the entries in a row have to satisfy. It also has to use a hexagonal grid to provide three regular expressions to control each entry.
This particular regular expression crossword was part of this year's MIT Mystery Hunt, and if you don't know anything about it then good — because it could waste a lot of time. This annual event is crammed with a collection of very difficult problems and the regular expression crossword, created by Dan Gulotta from an idea by Palmer Mebane, was just a small part of the whole — and yes there is a solution.
http://www.coinheist.com/rubik/a_regular_crossword/grid.pdf"

Link to Original Source

Comment: Count on Europe (Score 3, Insightful) 138

by Kergan (#42756847) Attached to: EU Citizens Warned Not To Use US Cloud Services Over Spying Fears

Methinks you can count on Europe to eventually get this right.

Twitter getting sued and losing to France's Jew student union over obnoxious hashtags is just the high profile round two of the same joust they had with Yahoo over nazi artifacts getting auctioned over a decade ago. They won last time; they'll win this time. And US companies will comply to French law on this matter just like last time. I suspect that the pitiful €1k/day fine is going to quickly balloon to obscene amounts of money until the courts get a reaction from Twitter.

In Germany, users are suing Facebook over the right to get deleted, and while they were the first, in typical German grassroots achievements, they no longer are the only ones. This is simply going to win, and they're just getting started. Sure enough, the Irish subsidiary is dragging its feet to comply. Presumably to Zuck's despair -- here's a continent with over 600M people willing not only in fighting for the right to be deleted but also in actually enforcing it. In the end, sane views will prevail, and the US laws will get kicked back across the Atlantic where they belong -- for US citizens to debate further, hopefully with new, more enlightened insights.

The same could arguably be told of countries like China, Egypt or Iran: ironically, US firms are made to comply with local law over there, plain and simple, much faster then they are to EU laws. But the EU is hopefully similar enough to the US that the latters' citizens will not shrug that the former are merely uneducated barbarians when their laws are sent back for review.

Comment: M.U.L.E. and Ultima 3 (Score 1) 704

by Kergan (#42713735) Attached to: What Early Software Was Influential Enough To Deserve Acclaim?

M.U.L.E., for all its descendants in the simulation genre, chief among them Civilization. Not that M.U.L.E. was the very very first, since Burten had written an economic simulation game prior to that, but it certainly popularized the genre.

Ultima III also comes to mind, for CRPGs. Best I'm aware, it was the first with a modern, graphical interface.

Comment: Nonsense... (Score 5, Interesting) 114

by Kergan (#42634611) Attached to: Amazon Sidesteps App Store Business Model, Plays Back MP3s From Safari

Apple has been clear from the start on this: "Don't like the App store's policies? Make an html5 app!" In fact, it was the only way to build apps for the original iPhone -- with Apple's blessing, at that. (And it still is how unwelcome vendors, e.g. porn operators, build iOS apps.)

Comment: Re:What about Magic? (Score 1) 136

by Kergan (#42595623) Attached to: The Science of Game Strategy

As in Magic the Gathering? The card game with 12,000+ individual cards? In my honest opinion, it's the greatest game ever made. It's incredibly complex, and yet still understandable.

May I ask how many of those cards you actually use in practice? Think hard: how often have you built a deck that used that white 1/1 banding creature card (I forgot its name...)? It's not limited to uninteresting common cards, either. When I looked into selling my shoebox full of cards, I got told that players seldom fielded Serra Angels or Thunder Spirits anymore because there were better white creatures -- whereas back when I played, you'd find a few of either or both in nearly every white deck.

Back when I played, there were (give or take) a half dozen cards per extension that players (bar beginners) cared to use in practice. You'd be looking into perhaps two or three hundred cards when building your decks. Even less (though admittedly from a slightly different set) when building a highly themed deck -- those were the only reason you'd keep cards like Goblin Bombs in your shoebox. With a few hundred cards, you've more than enough to build a deck around pretty much every theme you want.

Comment: Don't underestimate China (Score 1) 202

by Kergan (#42560795) Attached to: All New Homes In China Must Have Fiber Optic Internet Connections

Keep China's high population, the latter's geographical repartition (mostly to the east), its economy's high growth rates by western standards, and the fact that it's a developing country (still under-equipped) all in mind. Not to mention its government's authoritarianism. In that light, 40 million connected households in two years is not unrealistic imho.

Comment: Re:I dunno... (Score 1) 776

by Kergan (#42545625) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Are Timed Coding Tests Valuable?

Nah, the brainfuck version is a mere google away: :-)

>++++++++++[<++++++++++>-]<[>+>[-]>++++++++++[<++++++++++>-]<+<<[->>->+<<<]>>>
  [-<<<+>>>]<>>+++<<[->+>-[>+>>]>[+[-<+>]>+>>]<<<<<<]>[-<+>]+>[-]>[<<->>[-]]>[-]
  <<<[[-]++++++++++[>++++++++++<-]>++.+++.[-]<[-]+++++++++++[>+++++++++++<-]>+..
  [-]<[-]<<[-]>>]<>>+++++<<[->+>-[>+>>]>[+[-<+>]>+>>]<<<<<<]>[-<+>]+>[-]>[<<->>[
  -]]>[-]<<<[[-]+++++++++[>+++++++++++<-]>-.[-]<[-]+++++++++[>+++++++++++++<-]>.
  +++++..[-]<[-]<<[-]>>]<<[[-]>>++++++++++<[->-[>+>>]>[+[-<+>]>+>>]<<<<<]>[-]>>[
  >++++++++[<++++++>-]<.[-]]<>++++++++[<++++++>-]<.[-]<<<]>[-]++++++++++.[-]<[-]
  <-]

The unfacts, did we have them, are too imprecisely few to warrant our certitude.

Working...