Not so bad today. I bit the bullet and tried to see if dart has tuples or similar. It does, by the name of “records”. Now instead of pretending I’m writing in C/C++, I can pretend I’m writing in python.

Anyway, a) is a pretty straightforward job-interview style question, except AoC doesn’t care about efficiency. Still, we all have our own versions of pride, so I did it with a set (Though whether or not dart’s native Set is tree or hash based is not known to me right now).

int matches(String line) {
  ({List wn, List n}) card = getNumbers(line);
  Set wn = Set.from(card.wn);

  return card.n.fold(0, (prev, e) => prev + (wn.contains(e) ? 1 : 0));
}

void day4a(List lines) {
  print(lines.fold(0, (acc, line) {
    int m = matches(line);
    return acc + (m != 0 ? (1 << (m - 1)) : 0);
  }));
}

b) was a little harder, and definitely a possible trap for overthinking. I think the easiest way to think about solving this is as if it is a dynamic programming problem (though it kinda isn’t).

So the general approach is to formulate it like this:

T_n(total cards won by card n) = M_n(total matches for card n) + CW_n(total cards won by the copies that card n wins).

and

CW_n =

• 0 if M_n = 0
• sum of T_i, where i = n + 1 … n + M_n

Caching T_n is the DP trick to making this performant (though once again, it does not need to be)

Anyway, the above approach is the top-down version of the DP; the bottom-up version is what I actually started with in my head. I gave up on that approach because I felt like the logic was too hard for me to figure out.

void day4b(List lines) {
  List totalMatches = lines.map((e) => matches(e)).toList();

  // total copies won, including copies won from copies.
  List cachedWins = List.filled(totalMatches.length, -1);
  int totalWins(int i) {
    // return cached result if it exists
    if (cachedWins[i] > 0) {
      return cachedWins[i];
    }

    int count = totalMatches[i];
    // count the copies won from the subsequent copied cards
    for (int j = 1; j <= totalMatches[i]; j++) {
      count += totalWins(i + j);
    }

    // cache the result
    cachedWins[i] = count;
    return count;
  }

  int totalCards = totalMatches.length; // count all the originals
  // count all the wins
  for (int i = 0; i < totalMatches.length; i++) {
    totalCards += totalWins(i);
  }
  print(totalCards);
}