this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2025
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Advent Of Code

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Day 8: Playground

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[–] GiantTree@feddit.org 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Kotlin

I'm still catching up and this one was hard for me.
First I experimented with implementing a BVH (boundary volume hierarchy) due to three dimensions and possible dense connections between all junction boxes.
I couldn't get that to work and figured that basically a graph would suffice.
Implementing a simple graph and actually using it, I noticed that I didn't actually need a graph. The graph was rather slow and I had already calculated all the edges. So I just kept the shortest ones for part 1. I didn't even begin with part 2 at that time.
I used sorted sets as a way to keep the shortest connections because I didn't find a heap; only to find out that a PriorityQueue is a heap. For part 2 I knew I wouldn't actually need all connections, so I kept the shortest 12 per junction box and sorted them by length, shortest ones first.

The main idea of part 1 is to build all connections and keeping the shortest one in a heap. That way longer connections can be replaced easily and the longest one is readily available at the root of the heap.

For part 2 instead of building and using all the connections from shortest to longest, this solution keeps only a small number of shortest connections per source junction box. This way the sorting overhead is minimized whilst still solving the solution.

Building the circuits is something else. In order to preserve performance, all junction boxes and their unmerged circuits are represented by a circuit ID in an array. Merging is done by replacing the target/second circuit ID by the first one.

For part 1 this continues until all connections are made. Then the frequencies, bounded to the amount of junction boxes/circuits, are calculated and sorted from largest to smallest. This gives the necessary circuit sizes.

For part 2 instead of merging until all connections are exhausted, the solution needs to check, whether there are any junction boxes not in the merged circuit. Once all junction boxes are in the same circuit, return the last connection made.

A lot of the code requires the input to be consistent and being able to solve the puzzle but that is given.

Code with comments on GitHub

Code (yes, it's long)

class Day08 : AOCSolution {
    override fun part1(inputFile: String): String {
        val numConnections = numberOfConnections(inputFile)
        val junctionBoxes = readResourceLines(inputFile).map { line ->
            val (x, y, z) = line.split(",").map { it.toInt() }
            JunctionBox(x, y, z)
        }

        val connections = buildShortestConnections(junctionBoxes, numConnections)
        val circuitSizes = buildCircuitSizes(junctionBoxes, connections)

        // Calculate the result as the product of the sizes
        // of the three largest circuits
        var result = circuitSizes[0]
        for (i in 1 until 3) {
            result *= circuitSizes[i]
        }
        return result.toString()
    }

    override fun part2(inputFile: String): String {
        val junctionBoxes = readResourceLines(inputFile).map { line ->
            val (x, y, z) = line.split(",").map { it.toInt() }
            JunctionBox(x, y, z)
        }

        val connections = buildHeuristicConnections(junctionBoxes, 12)

        val (box1Index, box2Index) = buildCompleteCircuit(junctionBoxes, connections)
        val (x1) = junctionBoxes[box1Index]
        val (x2) = junctionBoxes[box2Index]

        return (x1.toLong() * x2.toLong()).toString()
    }

    private fun buildShortestConnections(
        junctionBoxes: List<JunctionBox>,
        connectionLimit: Int
    ): Queue<Connection> {
        val shortestEdges = PriorityQueue<Connection>(connectionLimit)

        junctionBoxes.forEachIndexed { index, box ->
            for (j in index + 1 until junctionBoxes.size) {
                val distance = junctionBoxes[j].distanceSquared(box)
                if (shortestEdges.size >= connectionLimit) {
                    // Keep the set of connections the required size and
                    // only mutate (remove and add) when a shorter connection is found.
                    if (distance < shortestEdges.peek().distanceSquared) {
                        shortestEdges.poll()
                        shortestEdges.add(Connection(index, j, distance))
                    }
                } else {
                    shortestEdges.add(Connection(index, j, distance))
                }
            }
        }
        return shortestEdges
    }

    private fun buildHeuristicConnections(
        junctionBoxes: List<JunctionBox>,
        connectionLimit: Int,
    ): List<Connection> {
        return buildList {
            val shortestConnections = PriorityQueue<Connection>(junctionBoxes.size * connectionLimit)

            for (fromIndex in 0 until junctionBoxes.lastIndex) {
                val from = junctionBoxes[fromIndex]

                shortestConnections.clear()

                for (toIndex in fromIndex + 1 until minOf(fromIndex + connectionLimit, junctionBoxes.size)) {
                    val other = junctionBoxes[toIndex]
                    val distance = from.distanceSquared(other)
                    shortestConnections.add(Connection(fromIndex, toIndex, distance))
                }

                // Calculate the remaining distances
                for (toIndex in fromIndex + connectionLimit + 1 until junctionBoxes.size) {
                    val to = junctionBoxes[toIndex]
                    val distance = from.distanceSquared(to)
                    if (distance < shortestConnections.peek().distanceSquared) {
                        // Keep the set of connections the required size and
                        // only mutate (remove and add) when a shorter connection is found.
                        shortestConnections.poll()
                        shortestConnections.add(Connection(fromIndex, toIndex, distance))
                    }
                }
                addAll(shortestConnections)
            }

            // Sort by shortest length first
            sortWith { c1, c2 -> c2.compareTo(c1) }
        }
    }

    private fun buildCircuitSizes(
        junctionBoxes: List<JunctionBox>,
        connections: Iterable<Connection>
    ): IntArray {
        // Array of circuit ids, beginning with each junction box as their own circuit
        val circuits = IntArray(junctionBoxes.size) { it }

        // Add connections between junction boxes by
        // merging the circuits they are in
        connections.forEach { (box1, box2) ->
            val circuit1 = circuits[box1]
            val circuit2 = circuits[box2]
            if (circuit1 != circuit2) {
                // Merge the circuits
                circuits.replaceAll(circuit2, circuit1)
            }
        }

        val sizes = circuits.boundedFrequencies(junctionBoxes.size)
        sizes.sortDescending()

        return sizes
    }

    private fun buildCompleteCircuit(
        junctionBoxes: List<JunctionBox>,
        connections: List<Connection>
    ): Connection {
        // Array of circuit ids, beginning with each junction box as their own circuit
        val circuits = IntArray(junctionBoxes.size) { it }

        connections.forEach { connection ->
            val (box1, box2) = connection
            val circuit1 = circuits[box1]
            val circuit2 = circuits[box2]
            if (circuit1 != circuit2) {
                // Merge the circuits
                circuits.replaceAll(circuit2, circuit1)
                if (circuits.all { it == circuit1 }) {
                    // We are done, when all circuits are the same
                    return connection
                }
            }
        }
        throw AssertionError()
    }

    private companion object {
        const val NUM_CONNECTIONS_SAMPLE = 10
        const val NUM_CONNECTIONS = 1000

        private fun numberOfConnections(inputFile: String): Int {
            return if (inputFile.endsWith("sample")) {
                NUM_CONNECTIONS_SAMPLE
            } else {
                NUM_CONNECTIONS
            }
        }

        @JvmRecord
        private data class JunctionBox(
            val x: Int,
            val y: Int,
            val z: Int,
        ) {
            fun distanceSquared(other: JunctionBox): Long {
                val dx = (x - other.x).toLong()
                val dy = (y - other.y).toLong()
                val dz = (z - other.z).toLong()
                return (dx * dx) + (dy * dy) + (dz * dz)
            }
        }

        @JvmRecord
        private data class Connection(
            val boxIndex1: Int,
            val boxIndex2: Int,
            val distanceSquared: Long,
        ) : Comparable<Connection> {
            override fun compareTo(other: Connection): Int {
                return other.distanceSquared.compareTo(this.distanceSquared)
            }
        }

        private fun IntArray.boundedFrequencies(upperBound: Int): IntArray {
            require(this.isNotEmpty())

            val frequencies = IntArray(upperBound)

            var element = this[0]
            var elementCount = 1

            for (i in indices) {
                val n = this[i]
                if (element == n) {
                    elementCount++
                } else {
                    frequencies[element] += elementCount
                    element = n
                    elementCount = 1
                }
            }
            // Add the last run to the frequencies
            frequencies[element] += elementCount

            return frequencies
        }

Unoptimized: 27ms and 32ms
Optimized (100 runs): 4ms and 6.5ms