Advent of Code 2024 Day 9 (BaseA Style)

[AlteryxCommunityTeam]

Discussion thread for day 9 of the Advent of Code - https://adventofcode.com/2024/day/9

[estherb47]

This one was a fun exercise, though I'm unhappy with my runtime for Part 2, and wonder if it can be done without a macro.... Would be a heck of a multi-row formula, and I'll noodle on that for a while.

Took a long time to figure out part 2, but once I did, I got the correct answer on the first try. Which is good because the run time was a very long 2 hours 8 minutes.

Happy Holidays to all!!

[kelsey_kincaid]

This is a bit of a blunt approach, but interesting problem.

Spoiler

Part 1 I solved with a sort & re-sort of the data and it was relatively straightforward once I landed on that approach
Part 2 was more complicated, and I got hung up on how to best handle free space. I had some edge cases in my data that gave me trouble, but eventually got there. May need to go back and wrap my head around all of those.

[lwolfie]

I will continue for the second star later if I have time.

[Pilsner]

Again, only got one part done on this one. Here's my solution:

Spoiler