43
4
You know nothing The things I do for "Chaos is a ladder" is a memorable line from the television series Game of Thrones.
The purpose of this challenge is to build a ladder from chaos, in ASCII art.
The challenge
Input
- Ladder width,
W >= 3(integer) - Step height,
H >= 2(integer) - Number of rungs,
N >= 2(integer).
Output
A ladder with horizontal rungs and vertical rails, all 1 character wide. Ladder width (W) includes the two rails, and step height (H) includes the corresponding rung.
All rungs, including the uppermost and the lowermost, will have a piece of vertical rail of length H-1 directly above and below. The example will make this clearer.
The ladder will be made of printable, non-whitespace ASCII characters, that is, the inclusive range from ! (code point 33) to ~ (code point 126).The actual characters will be chosen randomly. Given the inputs, each of the random choices of characters must have nonzero probability. Other than that, the probability distribution is arbitrary.
Leading or trailing whitespace, either horizontal or vertical, is allowed.
Example
Given W=5, H=3, N=2, one possible output is as follows.
x :
g h
q$UO{
t T
6 <
bUZXP
8 T
5 g
Note that total height is H*(N+1)-1, as there are N rungs and N+1 vertical sections.
Aditional rules
Input means and format are flexible as usual. For example, you can input the three numbers in any order, or an array containing them.
Output may be through STDOUT or an argument returned by a function. In this case it may be a string with newlines, a 2D character array or an array of strings.
A program or a function can be provided.
Standard loopholes are forbidden.
Shortest code in bytes wins.
Test cases
For each W, H, N a possible output is shown.
W=5, H=3, N=2:
\ ~
: K
ke:[E
5 u
0 _
8Fr.D
# r
7 X
W=3, H=2, N=2:
$ X
Mb)
0 ]
(T}
j 9
W=12, H=4, N=5:
d Y
P `
5 3
p$t$Ow7~kcNX
D x
` O
* H
LB|QX1'.[:[F
p p
x (
2 ^
ic%KL^z:KI"^
C p
( 7
7 h
TSj^E!tI&TN8
| [
< >
= Q
ffl`^,tBHk?~
O +
p e
n j
W=20, H=5, N=3:
G %
o y
% 3
- 7
U'F?Vml&rVch7{).fLDF
o }
U I
h y
a g
;W.58bl'.iHm\8v?bIn&
, U
N S
4 c
5 r
F3(R|<BP}C'$=}xK$F]^
' h
h u
x $
6 5
Luis Mendo
Posted 2017-09-14T14:41:17.417
Reputation: 87 464
can you add the (numerical) range for the ascii characters? – Rod – 2017-09-14T14:45:34.827
@Rod Good idea. Done – Luis Mendo – 2017-09-14T14:51:05.170
1What kind of lower limit on the quality of randomness is there? I assume starting at a random point and incrementing modulo (126-33) wouldn't qualify because of obvious correlation between adjacent values. Or does it have to be capable of producing every possible sequence? (So an 8-bit linear congruential generator wouldn't work, because one character uniquely determines the next character?) – Peter Cordes – 2017-09-14T23:50:25.107
@PeterCordes There is no problem with having some correlation, as long as every possible combination can occur. The approach you describe is, as you say, not valid because it introduces too strong statistical dependence between characters at different positions, making some combinations impossible – Luis Mendo – 2017-09-15T00:01:27.143
Every possible 2-character sequence sounds reasonable. Requiring that every possible sequence (for the whole thing) has non-zero probability is actually a pretty strong requirement. Most C implementations have a pretty week
rand()function (e.g. standards for other functions that interact with it make it hard to use more state). I wouldn't be surprised if the C answers using33+rand()%93or similar can't produce some sequences on x86 gcc + glibc. I think using a library RNG satisfies your intent, though. Is there a meta question about RNG strength? (In x86 asm I'd userdrand:) – Peter Cordes – 2017-09-15T00:27:23.1971
@PeterCordes Yes, I meant theoretically. Don't worry about RNG strength; you can assume the RNG is ideal. There's some meta consensus about that. I thought there was something more specific, but all I could find was this and this
– Luis Mendo – 2017-09-15T00:41:53.113