🎄 Advent of Code 2023

Solutions for Advent of Code in Rust.

This is the first year I am solving Advent of Code in Rust. My solutions might not be the most idiomatic, but I am trying to learn as much as possible along the way. Having written a lot of Clojure and TypeScript I tend to rely on iterators and functional programming patterns.

Note that per the template I am using and the wishes of the Advent of Code author I do not include my puzzle inputs in this repository. You can find the puzzle inputs for each day on the Advent of Code website, or you can use the aoc-cli as described below.

Benchmarks

Day	Part 1	Part 2
Day 1	179.1µs	564.4µs
Day 2	72.1µs	71.8µs
Day 3	684.0µs	630.5µs
Day 4	190.6µs	180.7µs
Day 5	24.5µs	2.0s
Day 6	329.0ns	17.5ms
Day 7	531.9µs	9.5ms
Day 8	810.1µs	790.2µs
Day 9	268.9µs	265.0µs

Total: 2032.26ms

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Template setup

This template supports all major OS (macOS, Linux, Windows).

Create your repository 📝

1. Open the template repository on Github.
2. Click Use this template and create your repository.
3. Clone your repository to your computer.
4. If you are solving a previous year's advent of code, change the AOC_YEAR variable in .cargo/config.toml to reflect the year you are solving.

Setup rust 💻

1. Install the Rust toolchain.
2. (recommended) Install the rust-analyzer extension for your code editor.
3. (optional) Install a native debugger. If you are using VS Code, CodeLLDB is a good option.

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✨ You can start solving puzzles now! Head to the Usage section to see how to use this template. If you like, you can configure some optional features.

Usage

Scaffold a day

# example: `cargo scaffold 1`
cargo scaffold <day>

# output:
# Created module file "src/bin/01.rs"
# Created empty input file "data/inputs/01.txt"
# Created empty example file "data/examples/01.txt"
# ---
# 🎄 Type `cargo solve 01` to run your solution.

Individual solutions live in the ./src/bin/ directory as separate binaries. Inputs and examples live in the the ./data directory.

Every solution has unit tests referencing its example file. Use these unit tests to develop and debug your solutions against the example input.

Tip: when editing a solution, rust-analyzer will display buttons for running / debugging unit tests above the unit test blocks.

Download input & description for a day

Note This command requires installing the aoc-cli crate.

# example: `cargo download 1`
cargo download <day>

# output:
# [INFO  aoc] 🎄 aoc-cli - Advent of Code command-line tool
# [INFO  aoc_client] 🎅 Saved puzzle to 'data/puzzles/01.md'
# [INFO  aoc_client] 🎅 Saved input to 'data/inputs/01.txt'
# ---
# 🎄 Successfully wrote input to "data/inputs/01.txt".
# 🎄 Successfully wrote puzzle to "data/puzzles/01.md".

Run solutions for a day

# example: `cargo solve 01`
cargo solve <day>

# output:
#     Finished dev [unoptimized + debuginfo] target(s) in 0.13s
#     Running `target/debug/01`
# Part 1: 42 (166.0ns)
# Part 2: 42 (41.0ns)

The solve command runs your solution against real puzzle inputs. To run an optimized build of your code, append the --release flag as with any other rust program.

By default, solve executes your code once and shows the execution time. If you append the --time flag to the command, the runner will run your code between 10 and 10.000 times (depending on execution time of first execution) and print the average execution time.

For example, running a benchmarked, optimized execution of day 1 would look like cargo solve 1 --release --time. Displayed timings show the raw execution time of your solution without overhead like file reads.

Submitting solutions

Note This command requires installing the aoc-cli crate.

In order to submit part of a solution for checking, append the --submit <part> option to the solve command.

Run all solutions

cargo all

# output:
#     Running `target/release/advent_of_code`
# ----------
# | Day 01 |
# ----------
# Part 1: 42 (19.0ns)
# Part 2: 42 (19.0ns)
# <...other days...>
# Total: 0.20ms

This runs all solutions sequentially and prints output to the command-line. Same as for the solve command, --release controls whether real inputs will be used.

Update readme benchmarks

The template can output a table with solution times to your readme. Please note that these are not "scientific" benchmarks, understand them as a fun approximation. 😉

In order to generate a benchmarking table, run cargo all --release --time. If everything goes well, the command will output "Successfully updated README with benchmarks." after the execution finishes.

Run all tests

cargo test

To run tests for a specific day, append --bin <day>, e.g. cargo test --bin 01. You can further scope it down to a specific part, e.g. cargo test --bin 01 part_one.

Format code

cargo fmt

Lint code

cargo clippy

Read puzzle description in terminal

Note This command requires installing the aoc-cli crate.

# example: `cargo read 1`
cargo read <day>

# output:
# Loaded session cookie from "/Users/<snip>/.adventofcode.session".
# Fetching puzzle for day 1, 2022...
# ...the input...

Optional template features

Configure aoc-cli integration

1. Install aoc-cli via cargo: cargo install aoc-cli --version 0.12.0
2. Create an .adventofcode.session file in your home directory and paste your session cookie. To retrieve the session cookie, press F12 anywhere on the Advent of Code website to open your browser developer tools. Look in Cookies under the Application or Storage tab, and copy out the session cookie value. ¹

Once installed, you can use the download command and automatically submit solutions via the --submit flag.

Automatically track ⭐️ progress in the readme

This template includes a Github action that automatically updates the readme with your advent of code progress.

To enable it, complete the following steps:

1. Create a private leaderboard

Go to the leaderboard page of the year you want to track and click Private Leaderboard. If you have not created a leaderboard yet, create one by clicking Create It. Your leaderboard should be accessible under https://adventofcode.com/{year}/leaderboard/private/view/{aoc_user_id}.

2. Set repository secrets

Go to the Secrets tab in your repository settings and create the following secrets:

• AOC_ENABLED: This variable controls whether the workflow is enabled. Set it to true to enable the progress tracker.
• AOC_USER_ID: Go to this page and copy your user id. It's the number behind the # symbol in the first name option. Example: 3031.
• AOC_YEAR: the year you want to track. Example: 2021.
• AOC_SESSION: an active session² for the advent of code website. To get this, press F12 anywhere on the Advent of Code website to open your browser developer tools. Look in your Cookies under the Application or Storage tab, and copy out the session cookie.

✨ You can now run this action manually via the Run workflow button on the workflow page. If you want the workflow to run automatically, uncomment the schedule section in the readme-stars.yml workflow file or add a push trigger.

Check code formatting / clippy lints in CI

Uncomment the respective sections in the ci.yml workflow.

Use VS Code to debug your code

1. Install rust-analyzer and CodeLLDB.
2. Set breakpoints in your code. ³
3. Click Debug next to the unit test or the main function. ⁴
4. The debugger will halt your program at the specific line and allow you to inspect the local stack. ⁵

Useful crates

• itertools: Extends iterators with extra methods and adaptors. Frequently useful for aoc puzzles.
• regex: Official regular expressions implementation for Rust.

A curated list of popular crates can be found on blessred.rs.

Do you have aoc-specific crate recommendations? Share them!

Common pitfalls

• Integer overflows: This template uses 32-bit integers by default because it is generally faster - for example when packed in large arrays or structs - than using 64-bit integers everywhere. For some problems, solutions for real input might exceed 32-bit integer space. While this is checked and panics in debug mode, integers wrap in release mode, leading to wrong output when running your solution.

Footnotes

Footnotes

1. The session cookie might expire after a while (~1 month) which causes the downloads to fail. To fix this issue, refresh the .adventofcode.session file. ↩

2. The session cookie might expire after a while (~1 month) which causes the automated workflow to fail. To fix this issue, refresh the AOC_SESSION secret. ↩

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