Question

Is there a ‘better/alternative/more readable’ solution to http://www.pythonchallenge.com/pc/def/linkedlist.php than the ruby code below?
I can understand it but it just doesn’t seem very clear to me…

#!/usr/bin/env ruby -w
# encoding: utf-8

require 'net/http'

Net::HTTP.start 'www.pythonchallenge.com' do |http|
  nothing = 12345

  nothing = case http.get("/pc/def/linkedlist.php?nothing=#{nothing}").body
    when /(\d+)$/ then $1.to_i
    when /by two/ then nothing / 2
    when /\.html/ then puts $`
  end while nothing
end

Answer 1

It was ok but let’s try to make it a little more readable:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby -w
# encoding: utf-8

require 'net/http'

Net::HTTP.start 'www.pythonchallenge.com' do |http|
  next_one = 12345

  while next_one
    response = http.get("/pc/def/linkedlist.php?nothing=#{next_one}").body

    case response 
      when /Divide by two and keep going./ then
        next_one = next_one / 2
      when /and the next nothing is (\d+)/ then
        next_one = $1.to_i
      else
        puts "Solution url: www.pythonchallenge.com/pc/def/linkedlist.php?nothing=#{next_one}"
        next_one = false
    end
  end

end