On Thursday, 4 February 2016 at 02:46:42 UTC, Xinok wrote:
A solution to this problem does exist: Build a tree of if-else branches for all the different possibilities (2^6=64) and hard-code the optimal sequence of swaps. However, this function would be huge so this isn't very practical.
Yeah that's kinda what i was coming to a conclusion to.
Ideally, we want to minimize the size of the function as much as possible, adding in a few extra swaps if necessary.
Hmmm if i wrote it (this way) it would probably brute force the proper way to build the function rather than doing it by hand myself. So a helper function to make the optimal if/else statements to deal with it.
BUT this only makes sense if it's always going to be 5 elements, if it's fewer or more, then it's sorta pointless and a more generic algorithm would be preferred.
Although writing a brute force program creation helper function could still be of some use.
