advent-of-code-template

Template repo for playing Advent of Code in python.

Includes a script to set up a script and empty input files for each day, plus some simple utility functions to help parse input files.

The utility functions were inspired by a blog post at https://www.keiruaprod.fr/blog/2021/11/23/getting-ready-for-adventofcode-in-python.html.

Note that this is a fairly minimal repo; if you're looking for something a bit more sophisticated that will read or post answers to the AoC website for you then take a look at this list of project templates on https://github.com/Bogdanp/awesome-advent-of-code.

How to create your repository

From https://github.com/alisonrclarke/advent-of-code-template, click on 'Use this template' and select 'Create new repository'. GitHub will then create a new repo for you based on this template. (Alternatively you could try opening it in a Codespace.)

For more details see the Github docs

Prerequisites

Make sure you have python3 installed. If your defauly python is python2, replace python with python3 in the commands below.

How to set up for a new day

Run:

python setup_day.py <day>

e.g. for day 7:

python setup_day.py 7

This will create 3 files (if they don't already exist):

day.py: the main python script into which you'll write your solution. It will include some basic boilerplate code, importing utils, and finding the relevant input file.
**day_input.txt: a blank file in which to paste your own puzzle input from the site. This will be ignored by git in accordance with the request from the Aoc mods.
**day_test_input.txt: a blank file into which you can paste the text puzzle input from the main puzzle page.

day.py is the main python file in which to create your solution. Once it's created just edit it as you wish.

How to run

To run with the test input, run;

python day<day>.py test

Make sure to use the 2-digit day number as per the created file name.

And to run with the main input, run:

python day<day>.py

Sometimes (e.g. for those pesky times when your code works on the test input but not on the full input), you might want to create multiple test input files. If you create them with the naming convention day<day>_test_input<suffix>.txt then you can add the suffix to the command line and your new test file will be found, e.g. if you create an additional file day07_test_input2.txt then you can run:

python day07.py test 2

utils

utils.py contains some useful functions for parsing the input file:

input_as_string returns the content of the input file as a string
input_as_lines returns a list where each line in the input file is an element of the list
input_as_ints returns a list where each line in the input file is an element of the list, converted into an integer

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