Apple

Your car odometer has 6 digits, from 000000 to 999999.

If your car made it to 1,000,000 miles, how many times would the

number 1 have shown up?

My first Applescript solution was:

set counter to 0
repeat with i from 0 to 999999
set x to i as string
if "1" is in x then
repeat with j in x
if contents of j is "1" then
set counter to counter + 1
end if
end repeat
end if
end repeat
counter

It took 63 seconds on my machine.

This cut it down to 58 seconds:

set counter to 0

repeat with i from 0 to 999999

set x to i as string

if "1" is in x then

repeat with j from 1 to length of x

if character j of x is "1" then

set counter to counter + 1

end if

end repeat

end if

end repeat

counter

They're both brute force, and I have a gut feeling that there's a more elegant method that I'm overlooking.

-- Michelle

You don't need to be 'straight' to fight for your country. You just need to shoot straight.

-- Barry Goldwater