Robbie Hatley's Solutions To The Weekly Challenge #289

For those not familiar with "The Weekly Challenge", it is a weekly programming puzzle with two parts, cycling every Sunday. You can find it here:

The Weekly Challenge

The Weekly Challenge for the week of 2024-09-29 through 2024-10-05 is #289. Its tasks are as follows:

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Task 289-1: "Third Maximum"
Submitted by: Mohammad Sajid Anwar
You are given an array of integers, @ints. Write a script to
find the third distinct maximum in the given array. If third
maximum doesn’t exist then return the maximum number.

Example 1:
Input: @ints = (5, 6, 4, 1)
Output: 4
The first distinct maximum is 6.
The second distinct maximum is 5.
The third distinct maximum is 4.

Example 2:
Input: @ints = (4, 5)
Output: 5
In the given array, the third maximum doesn't exist, therefore
return the maximum.

Example 3:
Input: @ints =  (1, 2, 2, 3)
Output: 1
The first distinct maximum is 3.
The second distinct maximum is 2.
The third distinct maximum is 1.

Function "uniq" from CPAN module "List::Util" will be very useful here.

Robbie Hatley's Perl Solution to The Weekly Challenge 289-1

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Task 289-2: "Jumbled Letters"
Submitted by: Ryan Thompson

An Internet legend dating back to at least 2001 goes something
like this:

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t
mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny
iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the
rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed
it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed
ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

This supposed Cambridge research is unfortunately an urban
legend. However, the effect has been studied. For example —
and with a title that probably made the journal’s editor a little
nervous — "Raeding wrods with jubmled lettres: there is a cost"
by Rayner, White, et. al. looked at reading speed and
comprehension of jumbled text.

Your task is to write a program that takes English text as its
input and outputs a jumbled version as follows:
The first and last letter of every word must stay the same.
The remaining letters in the word are scrambled in random order.
(if that happens to be the original order, that is OK).
Whitespace, punctuation, and capitalization must stay the same.
Word order does not change, only the letters inside the word.

So, for example, “Perl” could become “Prel”, or stay as “Perl,”
but it could not become “Pelr” or “lreP”.

I don’t know if this effect has been studied in other languages
besides English, but please consider sharing your results if you
try!

The trick will be to determine where each "word" begins and ends. The regexp metasymbol "\b" should help with this. Apostrophes will complicate things a bit, but I'll handle those in a second pass through the string.

Robbie Hatley's Perl Solution to The Weekly Challenge 289-2

That's it for challenge 289; see you on challenge 290!