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ADM Blog
23Jun/100

How to run python code in Windows batch (bat) files

Here’s the bit of tricky batch file magic that does it:

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@setlocal enabledelayedexpansion && python -x "%~f0" %* & exit /b !ERRORLEVEL!
#start python code here
print "hello world"

The way it works is that the first line of the file does two different things.

1. starts python interpreter passing the name of the file in, and the -x option will tell it to skip the first line (containing .bat file code)
2. When python finishes the script exits.

This nifty trick makes it much nicer for writing admin scripts with python on Windows.

28Mar/090

Sudoku solver in python

lens1512255_sudoku12Sudoku is a logic-based, combinatorial number-placement puzzle. The objective is to fill a 9×9 grid so that each column, each row, and each of the nine 3×3 boxes (also called blocks or regions) contains the digits from 1 to 9 only one time each. The puzzle setter provides a partially completed grid.
I'm really not a sudoku fan but I love solving problems and sudoku offers you a challenging one. So...here's a the shortest sudoku solver written in python

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def r(a):i=a.find('0');~i or exit(a);[m
in[(i-j)%9*(i/9^j/9)*(i/27^j/27|i%9/3^j%9/3)or a[j]for
j in range(81)]or r(a[:i]+m+a[i+1:])for m in'%d'%5**18]
from sys import *;r(argv[1])

If you want to test that, save it in a file and use the command line to execute the code. Execute the code as following: python solver.py puzzle - where puzzle is an 81 character string representing the puzzle read left-to-right, top-to-bottom, and 0 is a blank space

python solver.py 530070000600195000098000060800060003400803001700020006060000280000419005000080079

The problem with the above code is that is really slow. Here's another one that runs about 100x faster and is less cryptic.

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import sys
 
def same_row(i,j): return (i/9 == j/9)
def same_col(i,j): return (i-j) % 9 == 0
def same_block(i,j): return (i/27 == j/27 and i%9/3 == j%9/3)
 
def r(a):
  i = a.find('0')
  if i == -1:
    sys.exit(a)
 
  excluded_numbers = set()
  for j in range(81):
    if same_row(i,j) or same_col(i,j) or same_block(i,j):
      excluded_numbers.add(a[j])
 
  for m in '123456789':
    if m not in excluded_numbers:
      # At this point, m is not excluded by any row, column, or block, so let's place it and recurse
      r(a[:i]+m+a[i+1:])
 
if __name__ == '__main__':
  if len(sys.argv) == 2 and len(sys.argv[1]) == 81:
    r(sys.argv[1])
  else:
    print 'Usage: python sudoku.py puzzle'
20Feb/090

Quick Python Script Explanation

python cheatsheet