Apple

On 21 Nov 2008, at 15:59, Michelle Steiner wrote:

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.

set counter to 0

script k

property l : 999999

end script

repeat with i from 0 to k's l

set x to k's l

if 1 is in x then

repeat with j from 0 to x

if j is 1 then

set counter to counter + 1

end if

end repeat

end if

end repeat

counter

Simon

References:
	>A puzzle (From: Michelle Steiner <email@hidden>)