This is one of codeeval challenges
Challenge Description:
Credits: Programming Challenges by Steven S. Skiena and Miguel A. Revilla
The problem is as follows: choose a number, reverse its digits and add it to the original. If the sum is not a palindrome (which means, it is not the same number from left to right and right to left), repeat this procedure. E.g.
195 (initial number) + 591 (reverse of initial number) = 786
786 + 687 = 1473
1473 + 3741 = 5214
5214 + 4125 = 9339 (palindrome) In this particular case the palindrome 9339 appeared after the 4th addition. This method leads to palindromes in a few step for almost all of the integers. But there are interesting exceptions. 196 is the first number for which no palindrome has been found. It is not proven though, that there is no such a palindrome.
Here is my solution for it:
#!/usr/bin/env python
import sys
"""
I've done some tests with timeit and it seems that both numeric and string version
have the same performance (at least for numbers < 10000)
# def reverse_num(num):
# rev = 0
# while(num > 0):
# rev = (10*rev)+num%10
# num //= 10
# return rev
"""
def reverse(num):
"""Reverses the number
>>> reverse(1456)
6541
>>> reverse(111)
111
"""
return int(str(num)[::-1])
def palindrome(num):
"""Return the number of iterations required to compute a palindrome
>>> palindrome(195)
(4, 9339)
"""
# compute in 100 iterations or less
for i in range(100):
rnum = reverse(num)
if rnum == num:
break
num = num + rnum
return (i, num)
if __name__ == "__main__":
with open(sys.argv[1]) as f:
for line in f:
print "%s %s" % palindrome(int(line))
Any remarks on the code style, on the algorithm itself?
