Re: [MacPerl] The Powers of Annoy

[Nicholas.G.Thornton@directory.reed.edu (Nicholas G. Thornton)]

step 1) People generally are more willing to look at code if it's unobfuscated. (unless of course the question is how to make it more obfuscated). Below is a nice show of what your scrip should look like.
step 1b) that also applys to useful variable names. But that's always personal preferance, and I haven't looked at the code yet.
step 2) my comments to answer your question are below as well delimited by comment marks

$f = "54321";
$fl= length($f);
$e = 2**$fl-1;
$" = ", ";
@o = ($f, "", "");
print "\n\nThe Towers of Annoy\n\nInitial state: @o\n";
$y=0;
$n=0;
### above two lines could be ($y, $n) = (0,0);
until ($n >= $e) {
     chop(@o[$y]);
     $u = $y;
     $y=(($y+1)%3);
### $y = ++$y %3;
### I'd like to do a ++$y%=3; but unfortunately that doesn't work :)
     $o[$y] .= "1";
     $n++;
     print "Move #$n: @o\n";
     unless ($n >= $e) {
          $p = @o[$u];
          $s = length($p);
          $g = substr($p, $s-1, 1);
          $v = (3-($y+$u)); 
### $v = 3 - $y - $u;
          $r = @o[$v];
          $t = length($r);
          $h = substr($r, $t-1, 1);
          if ($h eq "") {
               chop(@o[$u]);
               @o[$v] .= $g;
          } elsif (($g eq "") || ($h lt $g)) {
### } elsif ($g eq '' or $h lt $g) {
### also if they're all numerical why not use numerical comparisons?
               chop(@o[$v]);
               @o[$u] .= $h;
          } else {
               chop(@o[$u]);
               @o[$v] .= $g;
          }
          $n++;
          print "Move #$n: @o\n";
     }
}
__END__

le meas,
--Nick

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