Year 33 - Data Backup Day - OCD (SPOILER - SPEED CODE)

[SadBunny]

Your friendly neighbourhood wannabe programmer is back again with more requests for hints. This time for Data Backup Day.

Here's my best attempt, which matches fastest known speed, but has 9 instructions.

How do I shave one off? Hints are cooler than solutions.

Just making my way through the chores, like a good human being.


=============== SPOILER CODE ===============

-- 7 Billion Humans (2059) --
-- 33: Data Backup Day --

if w < e:
	mem1 = set w
	step e
else:
	mem1 = set e
	step w
endif
pickup c
write mem1
drop

[shimmy]

You got a new command that could help with this.

[Kane]

Hint: you can pick up a cube with PickUp mem1 or mem2 if you store a cube in memory. That way you don't need to do both Step and PickUp, just PickUp.

[SadBunny]

Wait... I wrote down this whole litany, but now I get what Kane is saying. Let me work on that :)

[SadBunny]

Ok. I have a solution. But I have no idea why it works. Apparently, "pickup w" picks up the west cube to the current tile and doesn't make them actually move west, but "pickup mem1" DOES make the them move to the tile holding the cube.

In my head, I learnt that "pickup" didn't move the human. Now it suddenly does, just by giving it another class of things (mems) to pick up. I did not expect that and I'm somewhat disappointed by this, as it seems illogical

Oh well... I get it now. Thanks!

[Jampoth]

For the life of me I cannot figure out how to get this below 9 commands, even using memory locations to move, here's my current code:

 
-- 7 Billion Humans (2056) --
-- 33: Data Backup Day --

mem1 = set w
mem2 = set e
if mem1 > mem2:
	pickup mem1
	write mem2
else:
	pickup mem2
	write mem1
endif
drop

[Kane]

Originally posted by Jright:

For the life of me I cannot figure out how to get this below 9 commands, even using memory locations to move

Hint: you can solve this puzzle by using PickUp and Write only once.

[Aroll]

Sadbunny, this got me also. I had no idea that pickup mem1 would move my worker. Kind of annoying.

Originally posted by SadBunny:

Ok. I have a solution. But I have no idea why it works. Apparently, "pickup w" picks up the west cube to the current tile and doesn't make them actually move west, but "pickup mem1" DOES make the them move to the tile holding the cube.

In my head, I learnt that "pickup" didn't move the human. Now it suddenly does, just by giving it another class of things (mems) to pick up. I did not expect that and I'm somewhat disappointed by this, as it seems illogical

Oh well... I get it now. Thanks!

[MORA]

Originally posted by Jright:

For the life of me I cannot figure out how to get this below 9 commands, even using memory locations to move, here's my current code:

You dont need the else, if you are only optimising for number of commands.
So set the 2 memory locations to the state they need to be in incase w<e and then make an if e>w that sets them opposite, then pickup/write/drop based on the memory.

[Col. Hathi]

Great assistance. I spent waaay too long on this, even after you guys' hints