Advent of Code 2020 - BaseA Style (Day 8)

Jean-Balteryx

Discussion thread for day 8 of the Advent of Code : https://adventofcode.com/2020/day/8

Advent of Code

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jdunkerley79

This is far too close to IntCode...

Spoiler

Part 1: simple iterative macro
Part 2: batch macro switching nop and jmp one at a time

T_Willins

First part was straightforward; second part took a little longer to debug and get the Join correct at the end.

Spoiler

Workflow

Batch Macro

Iterative Macro

8a&b.yxzp

joshbennett

Looking at @jdunkerley79 and @T_Willins solutions, I may have overengineered my macro a bit!

Part 1:

Spoiler

Solution:

Iterative Macro:

Part 2:

Spoiler

Solution:

Batch Macro:

In the above batch macro, I used the same iterative macro from part 1, though I was not pleased with the performance results so am looking forward to looking through each of the other solutions to understand how I may have been able to do this more efficiently!

AdventofCode_2020_Day8_JB.yxzp

dsmdavid

Nested iteratives... as @jdunkerley79 says... IntCode, this year I'm ready for you. Or not.

Spoiler

day_08_01.yxzp

dsmdavid

Nested iterative... as @jdunkerley79 says... this year I'm ready for the IntCode. Or not.

Spoiler

day_08_01.yxzp

OllieClarke

Not especially happy with my approach as it took a *long* time to solve part 2. Here it is anyway though

Spoiler

Went with a batch macro containing an iterative, to brute force solve the puzzle. However, the fact that I was reading and writing a file every iteration, and using joins made it slooooow.

workflow

Part 1 iterative macro

Part 2 iterative macro

Part 2 batch macro containing part 2 iterative

Day 8.yxzp

peter_gb

Closed a container, alteryx crashed, stuck in an endless loop of open alteryx hang on file recovery... Ironic..

Spoiler

Managed similar to above solutions, iterative to solve, batch to feed in swapped instructions. Definitely could be tidier but got the stars so happy for now...

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AoC8_pgb.yxzp

danilang

Similar to above. Iterative to model the CPU and batch to modify the inputs

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main

CPU iterative

batch input fixer

Dan

Balders

Very happy with mine, I managed to use append fields over joins which I think helped with performance and managed to keep tools to a minimum in the first macro. The second macro needed a few extra tools to exit its loop at the right point.

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Main Workflow
Screenshot 2020-12-08 142535.png

Macro 1

Macro 2

AoC Day08 IanB.yxzp

AkimasaKajitani

Day 8!

Part 1 is simple, but Part 2 is too slow to search the result.

Part 1 is an Iterative macro and Part 2 is a Batch macro.

Spoiler

After the getting the stars, I improved the workflow a little.

Workflow:

Iterative Macro:

Batch Macro:

As anonymous user #1105310

patrick_digan

Spoiler

Iterative for the first part and then just duplicated the data for the second part so that way it's pretty fast still (4.4 seconds for parts 1 and 2). Similar to intcode last year, I just stuff the input into a single long string with everything spaced appropriately so that I can get objects based on position. I was using a lot of macro outputs to debug...

NedHarding

I was very happy that I managed to solve it without any macros! They are such a pain to debug, if you can avoid them its always good.

Spoiler

https://github.com/NedHarding/Advent2020/blob/main/Day8.yxmd

Balders

@NedHarding you're a madman but those multi row formulas are excellent.

Greg_Murray

Part 2 was tough for me. I ended up rebuilding and simplifying my initial iterative macro in order to solve part 2.

Spoiler

iterative

Batch

cgoodman

Solved part 2 without needing to do it with a batch macro by generating the rows for each of the 300 versions of the model input that are needed.

Same concept for the iterative macro for both parts, just a small tweak on part B so it exits when a solution is found.

Spoiler

Macro for Part B with the break when total records < records in previous step i.e. a solution has been found.

Aguisande

Sorry, no head for part 2 today.

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NicoleJohnson

I DID IT!! I figured out how to do this one without macros!!!!! Now to be fair, I solved it the hard & painful iterative-macro-within-an-iterative-macro way last night when I was trying to get stars... but then I spent all night not sleeping thinking there had to be a better way, and lo and behold, IT WORKED.

First solution (runs both parts in 30+ minutes, + Iterative Macro Inception):

Spoiler

Relatively simple workflow, relatively un-simple macros... though the first time I've used the automatic text input tool for AoC, courtesy of @NedHarding - thank you for the instructions/macro for this magical input option, Ned!!

Part 1 macro (which is also used in the Part 2 macro) - I'm not even sure at this point what it is doing, but has something to do with updating the value & the next instruction number for each iteration. And probably some extraneous inputs that are no longer needed... it was like 11:30pm by the time I finished, and I never want to see this thing again.

Part 2 macro, which will run the selected jmp/noc replacements through the Part 1 macro. Took about a half hour to run on my server - was shaping up to take 5 or 6 times that long on my laptop. I made it an iterative macro because it was slow and I wanted it to stop running the first time it ran into a scenario where it completed, rather than running ALL scenarios, potentially unnecessarily. I sort of hate this solution... but it worked, so there's that.

Second solution (Runs both parts in ~26 seconds + NO MACROS):

Spoiler

By combining the instructions into a single standardized pattern and then using a goofy but quite functional Substring+RegEx_Replace Multi-Row Formula, this ended up being extremely efficient and so much simpler to understand (and modify in future challenges, probably) than the macro-inception route above! I think I could make this work for running Part 1 & 2 at the same time with some tweaks to the post Multi-Row tool logic, a la Ned's approach that I see is sans macro as well - the Multi-Row formula tool is exactly the same for both parts, with the exception of grouping by Batch ID in Part 2.

Is BootCode the new Intcode? BRING IT ON.

Cheers!!

https://github.com/AlteryxNJ/AdventOfCode_2020

Day8.yxzp

Day8_NonIterative.yxzp

estherb47

Definitely not winning tool golf here. And I love @NicoleJohnson 's method of putting the row skipping and accumulator into one tool. For my brain, worked better in 2 multirows. Plus I added another multirow tool to see if codes repeated because I hated that the unique tool sorted the data and then I had to sort again to get back into order.

23.1 seconds. No macros. Take that, Intcode nightmares!!! Part 1 only took .7 seconds, which amazed me.

Credit goes to @patrick_digan 's method of concatenating and replacing pieces of code from last year. Worked like a charm.

Spoiler

Day8.yxmd

Jean-Balteryx

And nominated for the dirtiest solution ...

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2020-12-09 17_14_21-Alteryx Designer x64 - AOC_2020_Day_8.yxmd.png

2020-12-09 17_14_31-Alteryx Designer x64 - AOC_2020_Day_8_Iterative_Macro.yxmc.png

2020-12-09 17_14_44-Alteryx Designer x64 - AOC_2020_Day_8_Iterative_Macro_Part_2.yxmc.png

2020-12-09 17_16_20-Alteryx Designer x64 - AOC_2020_Day_8_Iterative_Macro_Part_2_2.yxmc.png

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