Remember, just because a problem is NP, doesn't mean it's unsolvable. It just means that there's no (known) way to solve it in polynomial time. All we can do in polynomial time is verify a solution.

There's no reason that one couldn't write an algorithm to solve this problem. The problem is that for any non-trivial number of boxes, it would take a long, long time and/or some pretty expensive hardware to run that algorithm.

--
Ryan Koppenhaver, Aspiring Perl Hacker
"I ask for so little. Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave."

In reply to RE: Re: Packaging Algorithm by rlk
in thread Packaging Algorithm by marius

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