From: Peter McMaster <mail@...>
Date: 2004-10-06T09:04:15+09:00
Subject: [SOLUTION] Secret Santas (#2)

Less fun, but more reliable possibly, is the 
mess-them-around-randomly-until-it-looks-right option.

It does this very stupidly, and will run indefinitely if you feed it 
something for which there is no solution. (If you're really unlucky it 
will run indefinitely if you feed it something really simple!)

  - Peter

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

class Person
   attr_reader :sname, :email
   def initialize(details)
     @fname, @sname, @email = details.scan(/(\w+)\s+(\w+)\s+<(.*)>/)[0]
   end
   def to_s() @fname + " " + @sname end
end

a, b = [], []

STDIN.each do |l|
   someone = Person.new(l)
   a << someone;  b << someone
end

puts "Mixing..."

passes = 0
begin
   ok = true
   a.each_index do |idx|
     passes += 1
     if a[idx].sname == b[idx].sname
       ok = false
       r = rand(b.length); b[idx], b[r] = b[r], b[idx]
     end
   end
end until ok

a.each_index { |idx| puts "#{a[idx]} is santa'd with #{b[idx]}" }

puts "[#{passes} passes required.]"