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[-] mkwt@lemmy.world 1 points 13 minutes ago

You missed "CM," which was common in copyright statements in the 20th century.

[-] Zyansheep@programming.dev 2 points 55 minutes ago
[-] olafurp@lemmy.world 1 points 42 minutes ago

It's not too bad, it's readable and easily optimised by adding intermediate sums and removing whatever power of 10 you're working on.

[-] TheLazyNerd@europe.pub 9 points 2 hours ago

Since Roman numerals have an upper bound, the time complexity is always O(1).

[-] BlackEco@lemmy.blackeco.com 1 points 5 hours ago

Depending on the language, you may be mutating the input value, which isn't great.

[-] qaz@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

I'm pretty sure it's Java (due to the syntax and Eclipse editor default color scheme), so that isn't an issue

[-] CookieOfFortune@lemmy.world 42 points 13 hours ago

This isn’t sufficiently enterprisey for Java. There should be a Roman numeral factory followed by relevant fromString and toInteger methods.

[-] vithigar@lemmy.ca 7 points 6 hours ago

Ugh. Literally refactored multiple factories into straightforward functions in the most recent sprint where I work.

Someone saw a public factory method which was a factory for a reason and just cargo culted multiple private methods using the same pattern.

[-] douglasg14b@lemmy.world 49 points 16 hours ago

Still linear time at least, could always be much MUCH worse

[-] dfyx@lemmy.helios42.de 32 points 15 hours ago

There could be a hidden quadratic cost because the string needs to be reallocated and copied multiple times.

[-] kogasa@programming.dev 3 points 7 hours ago

Not quadratic in the length of the input. Assuming replace is linear this is also linear

[-] Jerkface@lemmy.world 29 points 13 hours ago
[-] aaaaaaaaargh@feddit.org 6 points 8 hours ago

This is the spirit

[-] lugal@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 15 hours ago

True. Lost opportunity to blow things up with useless recursivity

[-] bleistift2@sopuli.xyz 14 points 14 hours ago

The word you’re looking for is recursion (see recursion).

[-] lugal@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 5 hours ago

Thanks. I knew something was off

[-] Gonzako@lemmy.world 5 points 11 hours ago

Nah, I'd like to un-see recursion. It was way overblown on uni, I barely ever use it.

[-] Cethin@lemmy.zip 8 points 6 hours ago

Recursion is amazing for a small selection of problems. Most of the time you don't need, or want, it. When it is useful though, it tends to be really useful.

I don't understand people's issue with it. I always found it easy. Maybe that's why I feel this way. Maybe if you find it challenging you want to avoid it, even when it's a good solution.

[-] Ephera@lemmy.ml 4 points 5 hours ago

I think, their point (and also my experience) is that you get taught about it in university a lot more than about simple loops, so it feels more important even though you rarely use it in reality.

Same thing goes for linked lists and inheritance...

[-] kamstrup@programming.dev 2 points 3 hours ago

Most devs I know like recursion. Trouble is that many popular languages don't support tail recursion, but throw a stackoverflow error after a few thousand levels. So you have to keep track of max recursion depth manually, and it starts to look like a complicated solution

[-] kamstrup@programming.dev 1 points 3 hours ago

Most devs I know like recursion. Trouble is that many popular languages don't support tail recursion, but throw a stackoverflow error after a few thousand levels. So you have to keep track of max recursion depth manually, and it starts to look like a complicated solution

[-] anugeshtu@lemmy.world 36 points 15 hours ago

Why don't you just ask Chat-GPT o3 every time? Works like a charm!

[-] lugal@lemmy.dbzer0.com 40 points 15 hours ago

Because there are better random generators

[-] theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world 92 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

Whenever you sit back and smile proudly to yourself about how clever the block of code you just wrote is, your next move should be to delete and rewrite it.

This is a clever block of code! Great job, now rewrite it to be sane 😂

[-] balsoft@lemmy.ml 23 points 16 hours ago

I think it depends; some smart code is good actually, think 0x5f3759df. As long as you properly document it and leave plenty of comments. This one is not smart though, at best it's what I would call witty.

[-] Cethin@lemmy.zip 4 points 6 hours ago

This isn't smart. This is clever. It's a way to solve a problem in a novel way. It isn't the best, or even most obvious, way to solve the problem. It's just interesting.

[-] theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world 17 points 16 hours ago

I'd accept that "smart code" and "clever code" are 2 different things

[-] Valmond@lemmy.world 9 points 15 hours ago

Fast inverse square root eh?

[-] rooroo@feddit.org 18 points 16 hours ago

It also works the other way round: wanna convert Arabic n to Roman? Just write n times ‘I’ and revert these replacement in inverse order.

[-] lugal@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 15 hours ago

I don't know what happens when the substring overlaps. Like for the number 6, will it replace the first 5 I's with V and end up correctly with VI or the last ones and come to IV? I would guess the former and maybe you know but I never thought about it before

[-] Atlas_@lemmy.world 5 points 11 hours ago

Also does not handle 'IIIIIIIII' -> 'IX' properly

[-] pitiable_sandwich540@feddit.org 2 points 7 hours ago

If the substitution went right to left it might work.

[-] TootSweet@lemmy.world 26 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

My first thought was something along the lines of a "zip bomb". For every "M" in the input string, it'd use more than a KiB of memory. But still, it'd take a string of millions of "M"s to exhaust memory on even a low-end modern server. Still probably not a good idea to expose to untrusted input on a public networked server, though. And it could easily peg a CPU core for a good while. Very good leveraged target for DDOSing.

[-] itsraining@lemmygrad.ml 6 points 14 hours ago

According to this code, "CEREAL" is a valid Roman numeral which equals 154. Great job!

[-] Zangoose@lemmy.world 12 points 18 hours ago

They forgot "CM" so this doesn't work for any number that ends in 900s

[-] trxxruraxvr@lemmy.world 47 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

No, M will be replaced by DD and then CD will be picked up, so it will go

  1. CM
  2. CDD
  3. CCCCD
  4. CCCCCCCCC
  5. ......
[-] eah@programming.dev 8 points 18 hours ago

It's got some code duplication. Who can code gulf this?

[-] TheLazyNerd@europe.pub 1 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

I'm not too good with java, but it should be something like this:

public static int convertRomanNumeral(string n){Map.of("M","DD","CD","CCCC","D","CCCCC","C","LL","XL","XXXX","L","XXXXX","X","VV","IV","IIII","V","IIIII");.forEach((k,v)->{n=n.replace(k,v);});return n.length();}

[-] grue@lemmy.world 21 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

Code gulf, you say?

public static String
convertRomanNumeral(String numeral) {
    numeral = numeral.replace("America", "Mexico");
    return numeral;
} 
[-] deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz 2 points 3 hours ago
[-] tourist@lemmy.world 44 points 17 hours ago
public static int convertRomanNumeral(String numeral) {
    return 4; // todo
}
[-] ray@sh.itjust.works 2 points 11 hours ago
public static int convertRomanNumeral(String numeral)
{
  numeral = numeral.replace("M", "DD")
    .replace("CD", "CCCC")
    .replace("D", "CCCCC")
    .replace("C", "LL")
    .replace("XL", "XXXX")
    .replace("L", "XXXXX")
    .replace("X", "VV")
    .replace("IV", "IIII")
    .replace("V", "IIIII");
  return numeral.length();
}
[-] qaz@lemmy.world 6 points 7 hours ago
public static int convertRomanNumeral(String numeral)
{
  return numeral.replace("M", "DD")
    .replace("CD", "CCCC")
    .replace("D", "CCCCC")
    .replace("C", "LL")
    .replace("XL", "XXXX")
    .replace("L", "XXXXX")
    .replace("X", "VV")
    .replace("IV", "IIII")
    .replace("V", "IIIII")
    .length();
}
[-] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 7 points 17 hours ago
[-] trxxruraxvr@lemmy.world 27 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

IIV would never be used. In Roman numerals at most one smaller unit can come in front of a larger one. The code doesn't do any validation though.

[-] Mirodir@discuss.tchncs.de 11 points 16 hours ago

While it doesn't say anything about IIV specifically, they sure got creative enough to sometimes subtract more than one of the smaller units from a larger one.

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[-] fckreddit@lemmy.ml 5 points 17 hours ago

I just wrote something similar for decoding binary asm instructions.

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[-] Olap@lemmy.world 6 points 18 hours ago

until(original=new) { run convertOriginal }

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this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2025
352 points (100.0% liked)

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