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Hello,

here is my solution for the arithmetic quiz. I am a ruby beginner and this
is my first ruby program (ok, my second one, the first was "puts 'hello
world'").
So please forgive me the dirty trick using eval (why build an own parser if
ruby provides such a fine solution?). I build in a brute force search
algorithm
via an iterative method for permutations. Therefore, any valid ruby
expression is allowed, e.g.

verbal_arithmetic.rb 'a+b
 && a+c
-b && a*c
'
solving a*b*c*d!&& a+b
 && a+c
-b && a*c
-- Solution ---
a: 2
b: 1
c: 3
d: 6

Please feel free to send any comments.

Regards
Holger




#!/usr/bin/ruby -w

#
# Solution to ruby quiz #128
# http://www.rubyquiz.com/quiz128.html
# by Holger
#
# Usage:
#   verbal_arithmetic.rb <equation>
#
# Examples:
#   verbal_arithmetic.rb 'send+moreney'
#   verbal_arithmetic.rb 'a+b
 && a+c
-b && a*c
'
#



#*********************************************************************
#  Permutator which gives all combinations of <m> elements out of
#    array <n>
#
#  usage:
#    perms(m, n) { |x| ... }
#
#*********************************************************************

def perms(m, n)
  p  nil] * m
  t  -1] * m
  k  
  while k > 
    if k
      yield p
      k  -1
    end
    n[t[k]]  [k] if t[k]>    while(t[k]<n.length())
      t[k]  [k]+1
      if n[t[k]]
        p[k]  [t[k]]
        n[t[k]]  il
        k  +1
        t[k]  1
        break
      end
    end
    k  -1 if t[k].length()
  end
end


# Read from command line and make valid ruby expression ( > if not
already present)
puzzle  RGV[0].gsub(/,")

# Extract all letters and all first letters
digits  uzzle.gsub(/\W/,"").split(//).uniq
starts  uzzle.gsub(/(\w)\w*|\W/,"\\1").split(//).uniq

if digits.length()> 0
  puts "oops, too much letters"
else
  # String containing all digits
  digitss  igits.join

  # Build "first digit must not be zero" condition
  cond0  tarts.join("*") + "!

  # And now perform an exhaustive search
  puts "solving #{cond0} && #{puzzle}"

  perms(digits.length(), (0...10).to_a) { |v|
    p0  ond0.tr(digitss, v.join)
    p1  uzzle.tr(digitss, v.join)
    if eval(p0) && eval(p1)   # Hint: first evaluate p0 as p1 may not be a
valid expression
      puts '-- Solution ---'
      [digits, v].transpose.each do |x,y| puts "#{x}: #{y}" end
    end
  }
end

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