From: Michael Ulm <michael.ulm@...>
Date: 2006-09-28T15:23:40+09:00
Subject: Re: [ANN] Code Golf Challenge : Oblongular Number Spirals

Carl Drinkwater wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> For those who found the 1,000 Digits of Pi problem too daunting, here's 
> something a little simpler for you.  The new Code Golf[1] challenge 
> involves you having to create a number spiral such as :
> 
>    1  2  3
>   10 11  4
>    9 12  5
>    8  7  6
> 
> and
> 
>    1  2  3  4  5
>   18 19 20 21  6
>   17 28 29 22  7
>   16 27 30 23  8
>   15 26 25 24  9
>   14 13 12 11 10
> 
> Seems pretty simple, huh?  The URL to the full challenge description is
> 
>   http://codegolf.com/oblongular-number-spirals
> 
> I found it more difficult than I first thought it would be, but the code 
> was a lot of fun to write.  At the time of writing the best Ruby entry 
> is 169 bytes.  Can you beat it?
> 
> Regards,
> Carl.
> 
> 
> [1]  http://codegolf.com/ - "allows you to show off your code-fu by 
> trying to solve coding problems using the least number of keystrokes."
> 

I finally found some time for golfing again. Here is my current solution.
Not very impressive, but may give others some ideas.

def f(n,m,k,o)
n*m==0?[]:(k>0?f(n-1,m-1,m-k-1,n+m-1+o).reverse<< n+k+o:(o+1..n+o).to_a)
end
x,y=ARGV.map{|t|t.to_i}
y.times{|i|puts f(x,y,i,0).map{|t|t.to_s.rjust((x*y).to_s.size)}*" "}

regards,

Michael

-- 
Michael Ulm
R&D Team
ISIS Information Systems Austria
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