Day 10: Pipe Maze

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  • AnanaceA
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    1 year ago

    The squeezing component in part 2 made this really interesting.

    I had a thought on a naïve solution consisting of expanding the input grid, painting all the walked pipes, and then doing a flood fill from the outside of the expanded map. There are a lot cleverer ways to do it, but the idea stuck with me and so…

    The code’s a bit of a mess, but I actually kind of like the result. It visualizes really well and still runs both parts in under 8 seconds, so it’s not even particularly slow considering how it does it.

    E.g;
    Picture of solution output

    Ruby

    A snippet from the expansion/flood fill;

    def flood_fill(used: [])
      new_dim = @dim * 3
      new_map = Array.new(new_dim.size, '.')
    
      puts "Expanding #{@dim} to #{new_dim}, with #{used.size} visited pipes." if $args.verbose
    
      # Mark all real points as inside on the expanded map
      (0..(@dim.y - 1)).each do |y|
        (0..(@dim.x - 1)).each do |x|
          expanded_point = Point.new x * 3 + 1, y * 3 + 1
          new_map[expanded_point.y * new_dim.x + expanded_point.x] = 'I'
        end
      end
    
      # Paint all used pipes onto the expanded map
      used.each do |used_p|
        expanded_point = Point.new used_p.x * 3 + 1, used_p.y * 3 + 1
    
        new_map[expanded_point.y * new_dim.x + expanded_point.x] = '#'
        offsets = @links[used_p].connections
        offsets.shift
    
        offsets.each do |offs|
          diff = offs - used_p
          new_map[(expanded_point.y + diff.y) * new_dim.x + (expanded_point.x + diff.x)] = '#'
        end
      end
    
      puts "Flooding expanded map..." if $args.verbose
    
      # Flood fill the expanded map from the top-left corner
      to_visit = [Point.new(0, 0)]
      until to_visit.empty?
        at = to_visit.shift
        new_map[at.y * new_dim.x + at.x] = ' '
    
        (-1..1).each do |off_y|
          (-1..1).each do |off_x|
            next if (off_x.zero? && off_y.zero?) || !(off_x.zero? || off_y.zero?)
    
            off_p = at + Point.new(off_x, off_y)
            next if off_p.x < 0 || off_p.y < 0 \
              || off_p.x >= new_dim.x || off_p.y >= new_dim.y \
              || to_visit.include?(off_p)
    
            val = new_map[off_p.y * new_dim.x + off_p.x]
            next unless %w[. I].include? val
    
            to_visit << off_p
          end
        end
      end
    
      return new_map, new_dim
    end
    
    • hades@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      That’s an interesting approach!

      I wonder why it runs so slow, though, as far as I can tell the flooding code is just a BFS on the grid, so should be linear in number of cells?

      • AnanaceA
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        1 year ago

        With the fully expanded map for the actual input it ends up working a 420x420 tile grid, and it has to do both value lookups as well as mutations into that, alongside inclusion testing for the search array (which could probably be made cheaper by building it as a set). It ends up somewhat expensive simply on the number of tests.

        The sample I posted the picture of runs in 0.07s wall time though.

        • Massahud@programming.dev
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          1 year ago

          Maybe you are adding the same point multiple times to to_visit. I don’t know ruby but couldn’t see a check for visited points before adding, and to_visit appears to be an array instead of set, which can store the same point multiple times.

          • AnanaceA
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            1 year ago

            There’s a next if [...] to_visit.include?(off_p), and I also only visit points that haven’t been flood filled yet (next unless %w[. I].include? val), so there shouldn’t be any superfluous testing going on.

            Went back and did a quick test of thing, and yep, converting the to_visit array to a set pulls execution time down to ~600ms. But the code becomes much messier.
            Going to move the mutation of the map down to the point where I pick a point for visitation instead, so I can re-use the check for already flooded tiles instead.