TL;DR

Here we are with TASK #1 from The Weekly Challenge #173. Enjoy!

The challenge

You are given a positive integer, $n.

Write a script to find out if the given number is Esthetic Number.

An esthetic number is a positive integer where every adjacent digit differs from its neighbour by 1.

For example,

5456 is an esthetic number as |5 - 4| = |4 - 5| = |5 - 6| = 1
120 is not an esthetic numner as |1 - 2| != |2 - 0| != 1

The questions

There might be some nit-picking here: which base to consider? It would be a moot question, though, because there’s still ample space for a base-2 number to NOT be esthetic (think ‘11`, for example), so there is no outsmarting our fine host here.

The other question I would have asked a long time ago would be the output format. I came from experiences in which my output would have been tested against some reference; here, though, there’s the pleasure of cracking challenges without the annoyance of getting the exact result as initially thought. I see this as an application of TIMTOWTDI spirit.

The solution

We’ll have to compare adjacent pairs of digits, so I thought to toss in some generalization and code a function to perform generic tests on adjacent pair of elements in an array. Raku:

sub test-adjacents (&test, *@input) {
   for 1 ..^ @input -> $i {
      return False unless &test(|@input[$i - 1, $i]);
   }
   return True;
}

Perl:

sub test_adjacents ($test, @input) {
   for my $i (1 .. $#input) {
      return 0 unless $test->(@input[$i - 1, $i]);
   }
   return 1;
}

At this point, it’s just a matter of feeding these functions with the right inputs, i.e. a test function and the list of digits. Raku:

#!/usr/bin/env raku
use v6;
sub MAIN (*@candidates) {
   put is-esthetic($_) ?? "$_ is esthetic" !! "$_ is NOT esthetic"
      for @candidates;
   return 0;
}

sub is-esthetic ($candidate) {
   test-adjacents(-> $x, $y { abs($x - $y) == 1 }, $candidate.comb());
}

Perl:

#!/usr/bin/env perl
use v5.24;
use warnings;
use experimental 'signatures';
no warnings 'experimental::signatures';

say is_esthetic($_) ? "$_ is esthetic" : "$_ is NOT esthetic"
   for @ARGV;

sub is_esthetic ($candidate) {
   test_adjacents(
      sub ($x, $y) { use integer; abs($x - $y) == 1 },
      split m{}mxs, $candidate
   );
}

I tried to look for something already baked into Raku, but without much luck. I’m curious to look at others’ solutions!

Stay safe and change the right amount every day!