Once more, in Swift (or: A solution to day one of Advent of Code 2019) : Global Nerdy

As I wrote in the previous post, the Advent of Code is happening soon — it start on Tuesday, December 1st and runs all the way to December 25th. If you want to give your programming skills a good workout or test, you’ll want to try out Advent of Code’s challenges!

The previous post featured Python solutions to the day one challenges from the 2019 edition of Advent of Code. In this post, I’ll present solutions written in Swift.

Day one challenge, part one

Here’s the first part of day one’s challenge:

The Elves quickly load you into a spacecraft and prepare to launch.

At the first Go / No Go poll, every Elf is Go until the Fuel Counter-Upper. They haven’t determined the amount of fuel required yet.

Fuel required to launch a given module is based on its mass. Specifically, to find the fuel required for a module, take its mass, divide by three, round down, and subtract 2.

For example:

For a mass of 12, divide by 3 and round down to get 4, then subtract 2 to get 2.

For a mass of 14, dividing by 3 and rounding down still yields 4, so the fuel required is also 2.

For a mass of 1969, the fuel required is 654.

For a mass of 100756, the fuel required is 33583.

The Fuel Counter-Upper needs to know the total fuel requirement. To find it, individually calculate the fuel needed for the mass of each module (your puzzle input), then add together all the fuel values.

What is the sum of the fuel requirements for all of the modules on your spacecraft?

While the problems in the Advent of Code are the same for every participant, the data for each participant is different (there’s a sign-up process, which gives you an account, your own progress tracker, and your own data). This prevents participants from simply sharing the solution.

Here are the module masses that were provided for my account:

I used the Python REPL for my Python-based solution. For my Swift-based solution, I used the closest analogue: an Xcode Playground.

Swift, like Python uses the three quotes to denote multiline strings. I used them to define a multiline string constant, rawInput, into which I pasted the data:

let rawInput = """
134492
88713
84405
148193
95951
63545
137840
65558
124836
95431
77622
91864
108677
116871
119496
97172
86115
105704
68613
77114
114013
52766
57048
80814
73888
58253
135934
97409
112439
98262
116047
57456
124261
83006
101495
133449
111372
56146
87818
92209
149259
124559
141838
147988
65703
125566
59650
139564
92430
126307
120406
147383
84362
51529
146366
131840
53270
71886
118767
104311
126181
76964
129430
95489
91098
54133
110057
107276
118226
96104
135382
85152
61697
143417
148879
126846
130205
111170
86687
113729
123330
56976
148470
66028
129715
75686
74964
148258
72669
88809
78173
92699
124806
67217
139066
136002
135730
145708
142054
135772
"""

With rawInput defined, it’s time to convert it from a multiline string into an array of strings, with each line getting turned into its own array element. The String class’ split method does this quite easily, and the result was the splitInput string array:

let splitInput = rawInput.split(separator: "\n")

The next step was to convert splitInput’s numbers-in-string-form into actual numbers. This process would involve applying the same function — the Int struct’s “init from string” method — to all the elements in an array, which is exactly what the map method is for:

let masses = splitInput.map {Int($0)!}

Swift’s map method takes a closure containing a function as its argument and applies that function to every item in the given array, creating a new array as its result.

In this case, the function in question is:

Int($0)!

Parameters passed into the closure begin with the $ character, which is then followed by a number specifying which parameter it is. The first parameter is $0, followed by the second parameter, $1, followed by the third parameter, $2, and so on.

Only one parameter is passed to the closure: $0, which represents the current element of the splitInput array. It’s fed into the init method of Int that takes a string and attempt to produce an integer. Since it’s possible that this method will be given a string that can’t be converted into an integer, the method’s return type is the optional type Int?.

Since I’m quite certain that all the strings in the splitInput array convert to integers, I used the ! operator to force unwrap the resulting Int? values.

The end result is masses, an array of integers. Each element in the array represents the mass of a component in the ship, and we need to calculate the fuel necessary to propel each component to the final destination.

This calculation involves applying a function to every element in masses, and that function is:

Divide the mass by 3, rounding down.
Subtracting 2 from the result above.

Once again, I used map:

let fuelRequirements = masses.map { mass in
    mass / 3 - 2
}

In the function above, mass and 3 are both integers, so mass / 3 is an integer division, which automatically rounds down.

The result of this mapping is fuelRequirements, an array of integers containing the fuel requirements for each module.

The result is the sum of all the values in fuelRequirements. Unfortunately, Swift doesn’t have a built in method for getting the sum of an array, so we’ll need to roll our own:

let totalFuel = fuelRequirements.reduce(0, +)

For my data, the result was 3454942. This turned out to be correct, so it was time to tackle part two.

Day one challenge, part two

Part two involved recalculating the fuel requirements when also taking into account the mass of the added fuel:

During the second Go / No Go poll, the Elf in charge of the Rocket Equation Double-Checker stops the launch sequence. Apparently, you forgot to include additional fuel for the fuel you just added.

Fuel itself requires fuel just like a module – take its mass, divide by three, round down, and subtract 2. However, that fuel also requires fuel, and that fuel requires fuel, and so on. Any mass that would require negative fuel should instead be treated as if it requires zero fuel; the remaining mass, if any, is instead handled by wishing really hard, which has no mass and is outside the scope of this calculation.

So, for each module mass, calculate its fuel and add it to the total. Then, treat the fuel amount you just calculated as the input mass and repeat the process, continuing until a fuel requirement is zero or negative. For example:

A module of mass 14 requires 2 fuel. This fuel requires no further fuel (2 divided by 3 and rounded down is 0, which would call for a negative fuel), so the total fuel required is still just 2.

At first, a module of mass 1969 requires 654 fuel. Then, this fuel requires 216 more fuel (654 / 3 - 2). 216 then requires 70 more fuel, which requires 21 fuel, which requires 5 fuel, which requires no further fuel. So, the total fuel required for a module of mass 1969 is 654 + 216 + 70 + 21 + 5 = 966.

The fuel required by a module of mass 100756 and its fuel is: 33583 + 11192 + 3728 + 1240 + 411 + 135 + 43 + 12 + 2 = 50346.

What is the sum of the fuel requirements for all of the modules on your spacecraft when also taking into account the mass of the added fuel? (Calculate the fuel requirements for each module separately, then add them all up at the end.)

This called for a recursive function, the Swift code for which is below:

func fuelRequired(mass: Int) -> Int {
    let result = mass / 3 - 2
    
    if result <= 0 {
        return 0
    } else {
        return result + fuelRequired(mass: result)
    }
}

I used this function to map the values in the masses array from part one onto a new array, updatedFuelRequirements…

let updatedFuelRequirements = masses.map { fuelRequired(mass: $0) }

…and the sum of its the elements was the answer for part two:

let updatedTotalFuel = updatedFuelRequirements.reduce(0, +)

For my data, the answer was 5179544.