I'm afraid you didn't pick a very stable "magic function" to optimize for.

It doesn't work with the first Python 2.x I tested it on (which turns out to be 2.7.2): 

$ python
Python 2.7.2 (default, Oct 27 2011, 17:53:49)
[GCC 4.3.2] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> /bb/build/Linux-x86_64-32/release/robolibs/big2014.21-611907-20140
+519105223/lib/dpkgroot
KeyboardInterrupt
>>> magic = chr(17)+chr(11)+chr(119)+chr(60)+chr(47)+chr(44)+chr(78)+c
+hr(103)+chr(125)+chr(48)
>>> for r in ["M", "D", "C", "L", "X", "V", "I"]:
...   n = hash(r + magic) % 1001
...   print r, n
...
M 338
D 602
C 93
L 733
X 555
V 933
I 402

[download]
It fails the same way with Python 2.6.7 on my Mac, but succeeds with Python 2.5.6: 
$ python2.5
Python 2.5.6 (r256:88840, Oct 11 2012, 20:14:10)
[GCC 4.2.1 Compatible Apple Clang 4.0 (tags/Apple/clang-418.0.60)] on 
+darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> magic = chr(17)+chr(11)+chr(119)+chr(60)+chr(47)+chr(44)+chr(78)+c
+hr(103)+chr(125)+chr(48)
>>> for r in ["M", "D", "C", "L", "X", "V", "I"]:
...   n = hash(r + magic) % 1001
...   print r, n
...
M 1000
D 500
C 100
L 50
X 10
V 5
I 1

[download]

Mike

In reply to Re: The 10**21 Problem (Part 4) by RMGir
in thread The 10**21 Problem (Part 4) by eyepopslikeamosquito

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