Advent of Code 2022

If all you have is data, everything looks like a SELECT.

My solutions to this year's Advent of Code, done in SQL, incomplete.

I blogged about it: SELECT solution FROM aoc WHERE year = 2022.

Requirements

• SQLite
• sqlite-utils (for day 7)
• The define extension from SQLean (for day 8)

My own rules

• Solve it in SQL.
  • I started to run that in BigQuery, but moved to SQLite.
• Only the SQL the system provides. How far can I take this?
  • It was easier on BigQuery with its large base of functionality, including string procesing, arrays, structs, ...
  • On SQLite initially I tried to avoid any custom functionality, I later relaxed this rule: SQLean is okay occasionally.
  • Once (so far) I used Python to preprocess the data. SQL is just really not good at text processing.
• Getting the solution once is good enough.
  • The code can be ugly, messy and inefficient.
• I don't write tests.
  • I do test. Just manually against the test input.
• No persistent data.
  • It's all in-memory tables, CTEs, temporary views and a bunch of SELECT.
• Learn some arcane SQL features.
  • Did you know SQL can recurse and select over windows? I do now!

These are my rules. I break them when I feel like it.

Run it

(Nearly) Every day should be runnable by:

sqlite3 < aoc-01.sql