Fun programming puzzler

In R.

Code:

morris <- function(b=1) {
c = b
repeat {
  cat(b,"\n",sep="")
  n = -1
  x = n
  for (i in 1:length(b)) {
    if (b[i]==x) c[n]=c[n]+1
    else {
      n=n+2
      x=b[i]
      c[n+1]=x
      c[n]=1
    }
  }
  b = c
}
}

This solves the more complicated version because the shorter one is the same number of characters, just change the first line into 2 lines:

Code:

morris <- function() {
b=1

135 characters either way, if I counted right.

I'm slightly cheating because to put in more than 1 digit, you use morris(c(1,3,1,3,1,3)), not morris(131313).


Also, technically speaking, it'll overflow when R runs out of memory (in 32-bit R, after 3 gigs, in 64-bit, after it uses all your RAM). But not much I can do about that.

 Version that will take integer input as specified: 183 chars

Code:

morris <- function(b=1) {
b = as.integer(strsplit(as.character(b),NULL)[[1]])
c = b
repeat {
  cat(b,"\n",sep="")
  n = -1
  x = n
  for (i in 1:length(b)) {
    if (b[i]==x) c[n]=c[n]+1
    else {
      n=n+2
      x=b[i]
      c[n+1]=x
      c[n]=1
    }
  }
  b = c
}
}