Day - 4 of the series took me very long as I did not fully understanding the way to detect empty line in Python
I have no words (as of this writing) as to why my initial solution didn’t account for the final passport case resulting in 1 less than the expected answer. My repeated submission eventually took me to the system saying something on the lines of “This is your 7th incorrect submission. You will have to wait 10 minutes before you submit another answer”.
Note: You have to put 2 blank lines (Not 1) at the end of input file for this code to return correct result
import re
""" Read every line until you encounter a blank line
As soon as a line is read, split to detemrine keys.
Using them, set the flag against keys such as (byr:|iyr:| etc.) in a map to 'True'
Once a blank line is encountered, count if flags on all fields excluding the optional 'cid' sum to 7.
If the result is true, increment valid_passport_counter by 1
"""
def execute():
valid_passport_counter = 0
fields = {
'byr': False,
'iyr': False,
'eyr': False,
'hgt': False,
'hcl': False,
'ecl': False,
'pid': False,
'cid': False
}
field_keys = fields.keys()
valid_field_count = 0
with open('input-4.txt', 'r') as lines:
for line in lines:
if not line.strip():
valid_field_count = 0
for key in field_keys:
if key != 'cid' and fields[key] == True:
# print(key)
valid_field_count += 1
if valid_field_count >= 7:
valid_passport_counter += 1
# print('Accepted')
for key in field_keys:
fields[key] = False
else:
for pair in line.split():
key, val = pair.split(':')
if key in field_keys:
fields[key] = True
print(valid_passport_counter)
execute()
Here’s the time taken in 3 consecutive runs:
shashank@shashank-HP-ENVY-Notebook:~/Projects/personal/programming-challenges/advent-of-code/2020/day-4$ time python3 part-1-attempt-1.py
246
real 0m0.028s
user 0m0.020s
sys 0m0.008s
shashank@shashank-HP-ENVY-Notebook:~/Projects/personal/programming-challenges/advent-of-code/2020/day-4$ time python3 part-1-attempt-1.py
246
real 0m0.026s
user 0m0.026s
sys 0m0.001s
shashank@shashank-HP-ENVY-Notebook:~/Projects/personal/programming-challenges/advent-of-code/2020/day-4$ time python3 part-1-attempt-1.py
246
real 0m0.045s
user 0m0.040s
sys 0m0.004s
shashank@shashank-HP-ENVY-Notebook:~/Projects/personal/programming-challenges/advent-of-code/2020/day-4$
Do you see why I had to put an additional blank line in input file at the end for this code to work? If so, please Tweet your reply or Open an Issue or Respond on Reddit referencing the title.
if not line.strip(): is not checking for just a blank line but is indeed checking for a blank line + a carriag return? I still am not sure