Hey.. I beat the countdown nerd

[killgORE]

Well.. I got a program that 0wns everyone on countdown. You guessed it. I am idling after getting my degree, and there was ABSOLUTELY nothing on tv, and so I saw this british staple show. And got irritated that a spotty git beat me. Don't get mad... get even.

Hax3d together an anagram generator in java that works quite well. I suppose I just need a better dictionary to improve things - standard usr/bin/words or wherever it is.

Now all I need to do is figure out the number generator.. darn it. don't really see how that is possible without trying out EVERY possible combination of + - * /, and some kind of range limiter saying that if it gets within 5 of the target it should print out the order, stop calculating this stream, then try another path.

OR. as I am typing this. How about simply taking the target number, and trying to reach 0 ? hmm.. that seems a bit better.

[Zathras]

Every combination isn't too difficult. I wrote something similar back in GCSE IT using BBC BASIC.

[Big RICHARD]

It happens where it isn't possible to get to a particular number with the numbers presented and only + - / * to use.

You need to work on iteration methinks. This is the kind of stuff those self-evolving computers use and is VERY complicated.

[killgORE]

hey.. I see that your rep is rising rapidly big richard.

I swear it was ten in the other thread. Plus. I fought that the splelling thing was a fare point.

[Zathras]

It happens where it isn't possible to get to a particular number with the numbers presented and only + - / * to use.

So keep a record of the closest number obtained and the expression done.

You need to work on iteration methinks. This is the kind of stuff those self-evolving computers use and is VERY complicated.

You need nothing of the sort. There is a strictly finite set of expressions using the Countdown rules and numbers. Give me a few hours and I'll try to pull out my old code. It's on my Acorn which is sans PSU at the mo.

[killgORE]

was postulating that arrays are crap.. Go on. Admit it, you hate the little buggers.

So I converted it to hashtable which has VERY interesting properties. Works using "containsKey" method. Which is more consice programming. Any inefficiency is cleary outweighed by no longer having to compute signatures ?

AND. the program now is guaranteed to find any anagram or word that can be constructed from the input characters. Something that was bugging me when I used arrays to get an alphabetical signature, and regular expressions (these two combined seem to be the traditional approach)

Just bringing this thread to a happy little conclusion.