in reply to Re^4: solve cubic equations (Python)
in thread solve cubic equations

Show me a hackerrank problem that can't be solved in Perl because of time restrictions.

The only one I haven't been able to solve in Perl was PRNG Sequnce Guessing, so I solved it in Java. But the problem wasn't the time constraint, but the different behaviour of bit operators on big numbers.

($q=q:Sq=~/;[c](.)(.)/;chr(-||-|5+lengthSq)`"S|oS2"`map{chr |+ord
}map{substrSq`S_+|`|}3E|-|`7**2-3:)=~y+S|`+$1,++print+eval$q,q,a,

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Re^6: solve cubic equations (Java)
by no_slogan (Deacon) on May 05, 2017 at 06:49 UTC
    Now that I've had some time to kick it around, this is actually a great example. My Python program solves the sample problem in 1 second. In Perl, using Math::BigInt with the default backend, it takes 10 seconds. With the GMP backend, 5 seconds. With Math::GMP, 1 second, same as Python. By resorting to vile trickery, I was able to get the Perl to run in 0.5 seconds with no modules at all. Here's the kicker, though: the Python program runs in 0.1 second under PyPy (basically JIT compiled Python).
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      That's intriguing. I admit I've never used Perl's bignum or bigint features for anything serious. Are you able to post short benchmark programs for this? It would be interesting to profile and figure out where the bottleneck is. Which version of Perl, by the way?

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        Well, I hate to post a complete solution to one of their problems, so I've changed it around. The question is, given the first 10 outputs of this pseudo-random number generator: 
        for (1..10) {
   $s = ($s*0x5deece66d + 0xb) % 2**48;
   say(($s>>17)%1000);
}

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        Find the initial value of the seed $s, which is a randomly-chosen number less than 2**17. Here are the comparisons of a brute-force search using several different modules: 
                  s/iter    BigInt BigIntGMP       GMP      Perl
BigInt      25.0        --      -42%      -94%     -100%
BigIntGMP   14.4       73%        --      -90%      -99%
GMP         1.47     1605%      885%        --      -93%
Perl       0.110    22701%    13070%     1238%        --

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        I'm running perl 5.24.1 on an aging MacBook. I could make the Perl faster, but it would require a 64-bit perl build. You could probably get good performance with Math::Int64, but I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader. Python is running in time comparable to the pure-Perl, and PyPy smokes them all at under a millisecond. Full code is below. You don't need to tell me that my benchmarking methodology is bad.
        Read more... (2 kB)
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      Talking about JIT, maybe try benchmarking a JS version too. :)

      Cheers Rolf
      (addicted to the Perl Programming Language and ☆☆☆☆ :)
      Je suis Charlie!

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Re^6: solve cubic equations (Java)
by no_slogan (Deacon) on May 04, 2017 at 17:04 UTC

    Oh look, it's basically the same problem I solved in my old node, Predict Random Numbers. Fifteen years ago. Back then, there wasn't so much information available online, so I actually had to get on my bike and ride to the Stanford math department library to find that algorithm.

    That problem involves 48-bit numbers, which really aren't all that big. Maybe try something in the Number Theory category.

    Update: Haha, we didn't have youtube back then either.

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      Hey! That was a great node. Lattice basis reduction? Why don't you take a crack at >this< Subset Sum problem? :-)

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In Section Cool Uses for Perl