Notes:

1. The aim of the tournament is the shortest solution on each hole. You should publish your score with each solution. Counting is as follows:

    sub hole{print "hello, world"}    For a sub 
             123456789_123456789_     20 chars

    perl -e 'print "hello, world"'    For a one liner
    123456789_123456789_123456789_    30  chars
[download]

2. "use strict" and -w are not required.

3. All subroutines which should return a single scalar value will be called in a scalar context.


Thanks again to Uri and the others who contributed to the PGA. Uri's Perl Golf page is here.



ROUND 1: Holes 1-6


Hole 1 - Fifth Word

Write a Perl subroutine which returns the fifth word in a string. A word is any sequence of letters, numbers, and/or underscores. The string will be passed as the sole argument and will contain at least 5 words.

* Difficulty: Easy

* Time: 3 minutes



Hole 2 - Error Message

Write a Perl one-liner that prints the following to STDERR:

Can't find label TPC at -e line 5.
[download]

* Difficulty: Easy

* Time: 3 minutes



Hole 3 - Smallest Repeating Pattern

Write a subroutine that accepts a string which may consist of a repeating pattern, and returns the smallest repeating substring. If the string does not consist of a repeating pattern, the subroutine should return undef or the empty string. e.g.:

   input       output
  'aaaaaa'     'a'
  'ababab'     'ab'
  'aabaab'     'aab'
  'ababaa'     ''
[download]

* Difficulty: Easy

* Time: 4 minutes



Hole 4 - Hex to Char

Write a subroutine which, given a string consisting entirely of hexadecimal digits, converts pairs of digits to their ASCII character equivalents and returns the result as a list of characters. The hexadecimal digits A-F may appear in upper or lower case. There will be an even number of digits in the string. e.g.

  5065726c206861636b6572
    ->
  ('P', 'e', 'r', 'l', ' ', 'h', 'a', 'c', 'k', 'e', 'r')
[download]

* Difficulty: Easy

* Time: 4 minutes



Hole 5 - Max without Sort

Write a subroutine that accepts a list of numbers, and returns the maximum number from the list, without using Perl's built-in sort.

* Difficulty: Easy

* Time: 4 minutes



Hole 6 - Vowel Sort

Write a subroutine that accepts a list of words, and returns the list sorted by the first *vowel* that appears in each word. If two words have the same first vowel, it does not matter which is sorted first. Words will be in lowercase and will always contain at least one vowel. (Vowels are a, e, i, o, and u.)

   e.g.:     hole('dog', 'cat', 'fish', 'duck', 'lemur')
   returns:  ('cat', 'lemur', 'fish', 'dog', 'duck')
[download]

* Difficulty: Easy

* Time: 5 minutes




They get harder. ;-)

John.
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