From: Ryan Davis <ryand-ruby@...>
Date: 2008-07-13T11:30:43+09:00
Subject: Re: [QUIZ] Symbolify (#169)


On Jul 11, 2008, at 12:25 , Alex LeDonne wrote:

> After clearing a "duh" moment, I've improved these encoded lengths...
> symbolify(999).length == 127
> symbolify(9999).length == 127
> symbolify(999999).length == 337
> symbolify(12345678901234567890).length == 1112
> symbolify(("9"*2100).to_i).length == 350265

I'm not a good golfer by any means... Hell, I preach against it. My  
original solution is a LOT longer than any of the numbers (size of  
code) given here, it doesn't cheat... I suspect it is faster than any  
of the golfed solutions tho. But seeing Ara and James and folks  
mention the size of their solutions just blew me away. I knew I was  
doing something terribly wrong. Or not. I dunno...

That said, I just wrote a version that cheats heavily and came up with:

p symbolify(999).length                  # => 5
p symbolify(9999).length                 # => 6
p symbolify(999999).length               # => 9
p symbolify(12345678901234567890).length # => 28
p symbolify(("9"*2100).to_i).length      # => 3005

and the total size for 0..10k is 56101.

I still think my other solution is better, despite being much much  
bigger and having much bigger output. It'll be a ton faster for wide  
ranges of values, and it doesn't cheat.