AocRbHelpers

This gem provides helper classes and functions to simplify solving Advent of Code puzzles. It is a companion gem to the aoc_rb gem.

Be warned - using this gem might suck the fun out of solving the puzzles yourself!

Getting Started

First of all, install the aoc_rb gem and set up your project.

Next, add this gem to your project Gemfile, and run bundle install.

Open up challenges/shared/solution.rb in your project and require this gem at the top:

# frozen_string_literal: true

require "aoc_rb_helpers"     # <-- Add this line

class Solution
  ...
end

You're good to go!

This gem additionally installs the excellent puts_debuggerer gem, which you can use like this:

pd some_object

You can read more on how you can use pd in their README.

Provided Helper Classes

All documentation is available here - https://rubydoc.info/github/pacso/aoc_rb_helpers.

The provided helper classes are as follows:

AocInput

Provides input manipulation helper methods. Methods are chainable, and directly modify the parsed view of the input data within the @data instance variable.

DotMatrix

Parses and decodes ASCII art text from puzzles. Can output to STDOUT or return the result to your code.

Will turn an input like:

 XX  XXXX X    XXXX X     XX  X   XXXXX  XX   XXX
X  X X    X    X    X    X  X X   XX    X  X X   
X    XXX  X    XXX  X    X  X  X X XXX  X    X   
X    X    X    X    X    X  X   X  X    X     XX 
X  X X    X    X    X    X  X   X  X    X  X    X
 XX  X    XXXX XXXX XXXX  XX    X  X     XX  XXX 

Into the string CFLELOYFCS.

Examples

Below are some examples of how you can use the features of this gem.

Input manipulation

This example solution for 2024 Day 1 shows how the convenience methdos can be used to format the puzzle input:

# frozen_string_literal: true

module Year2024
  class Day01 < Solution
    def part_1
      list_1, list_2 = data
      list_1.each_with_index.sum { |item, index| (item - list_2[index]).abs }
    end

    def part_2
      list_1, list_2 = data
      list_1.each.sum { |item| item * list_2.count(item) }
    end

    private

    def data
      aoc_input
        .multiple_lines
        .columns_of_numbers
        .transpose
        .sort_arrays
        .data
    end
  end
end

Decoding printed text

text_input = <<~EOF
  X  X XXXX X    X     XX  
  X  X X    X    X    X  X 
  XXXX XXX  X    X    X  X 
  X  X X    X    X    X  X 
  X  X X    X    X    X  X 
  X  X XXXX XXXX XXXX  XX  
EOF

input_array = text_input.lines(chomp: true).map(&:chars)
DotMatrix.decode(input_array) # returns the string "HELLO"