Discussion on: AoC Day 14: Chocolate Charts

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The part 1 was super easy: I just pushed new elements to an array.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
use feature qw{ say };

chomp( my $input = <> );

my @scores = (3, 7);
my @elves = (0, 1);
while (@scores < 11 + $input) {
    my $new = $scores[ $elves[0] ] + $scores[ $elves[1] ];
    push @scores, split //, $new;
    $elves[$_] += 1 + $scores[ $elves[$_] ], $elves[$_] %= @scores
        for 0, 1;
}
say @scores[$input .. 9 + $input];

When I adapted the algorithm for the part 2, it took almost a minute to get the answer. To optimize it, I used strings instead of arrays of numbers (strings are not arrays in Perl).

#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
use feature qw{ say };

chomp( my $input = <> );

my $score = '37';
my @elves = (0, 1);
while (length $score < length $input
       || -1 == rindex substr($score, -12), $input
) {
    my $new = substr($score, $elves[0], 1) + substr $score, $elves[1], 1;
    $score .= $new;
    $elves[$_] += 1 + substr($score, $elves[$_], 1),
        $elves[$_] %= length $score
        for 0, 1;
}
say rindex $score, $input;