Talk:Eban numbers

Optimizations?

From the task description:

Only numbers less than one sextillion 10²¹ will be considered in/for this task.
This will allow optimizations to be used.

I am mildly curious as to what optimizations this refers to. Maybe I am missing something, but I am failing to see how limiting to one sextillion offers any way to optimize. Not so big a deal for the Perl 6 example as it counts the *-ban numbers up to one sextillion 3 times in less than a second (on my system). I just wonder what I am overlooking. --Thundergnat (talk) 21:06, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

See the REXX solution (I think it has the best comments for eliminating numbers that have an e in them). At this time, I believe there are four other computer programming language solutions that use (more or less) the same algorithm.

The algorithm roughly is:

separate the (decimal) number into periods (into groups of three digits starting from the right).
for the units position, eliminate one, three, five, seven, eight, and nine.
for the tens position, eliminate ten, eleven, twelve, teens, twenty, seventy, eighty, and ninety.
for the hundreds position, eliminate all numbers greater than zero and aren't a blank, as any hundred has an e.

This algorithm will work up to the sextillions (and beyond the septillions, it's hit and miss, so to speak). There are some numbers that have multiple spellings, so I included that sextillion limit to bypass these minefields. -- Gerard Schildberger (talk) 23:31, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

Also of note, the algorithm mentioned (above) should have the numbers pluralized, but then twenty would become twenties. and I thought the 2^nd spelling would maybe confuse some people. -- Gerard Schildberger (talk) 23:31, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

Ah. Makes sense. I went a different way with Perl 6 but I can see your point. Thanks. --Thundergnat (talk) 23:56, 22 March 2019 (UTC)