Ruby Challenge!

[Jim]

Does SketchUp need to remain usable while the sounds are playing?

[RickW]

I don't see that as a requirement, but if you want to implement it, you may get extra kudos.

The song number and title may be indicated anywhere you like, but if you use popup boxes, remember they often 'ding' when they appear, and that sound must not interfere with the track being played.

[Jim]

It's the "without interruption from other system sounds or alerts" that's killing me.

[RickW]

Yes, it's definitely a challenge...

[RickW]

So far, we have three entries, all with distinct solutions. Only 3 days left to enter...

[todd burch]

Well, count me out. Didn't get to it. Next time!

Todd

[RickW]

Okay, here are the results, sorted by order of submission, path-coded for Windows XP:

@rickw said:

147 characters, 5 semicolons

(f=Dir["C;/Windows/Media/*.wav"]).sort!;i=0;t=UI.start_timer(3,true){puts "#{i}; #{f[i]}";UI.play_sound(f[i]);i+=1;UI.stop_timer(t) if i>=f.length}

@unknownuser said:

110 characters, 5 semicolons

fn=0;d="c;/Windows/Media";Dir.foreach(d){|s| fn+=1;UI.play_sound(File.join(d,s));puts "#{fn}; #{s}";sleep(2)}

@tig said:

114 characters, 2 semicolons

Dir.chdir(d="C;/WINDOWS/Media/");(c=Dir['*.wav']).each{|w|UI.play_sound(d+w);UI.inputbox([w],[c.index(w).to_s],d)}
> 

@jim said:

258 characters, 18 semicolons

@f=Dir["c;/windows/media/*"];def b(i);io=open(i,"rb");io.pos=28;b=io.read(4);io.close;b.unpack("i")[0].to_f;end;def j;t=0;@f.each_with_index{|s,i|;UI.start_timer(t){;Sketchup.set_status_text"#{i+1};#{s}";UI.play_sound(s);};t+=(File.stat(s).size/b(s));};end;j
> 

Kudos to Thicket for the shortest code!
Honorable mention to TIG for second-shortest by 4 characters.
Kudos to Jim for checking the filesize to get the delay time!
Kudos to TIG for a really clever way of presenting the track info and avoiding both sound overlaps and system sound intrusion!

Now, for the follow-up challenge:
Create the jukebox with less than 100 characters! Entries due by noon (GMT-6) on Monday, 6 August 2007. Short challenge, but the hard work's been done

[todd burch]

@rickw said:

Now, for the follow-up challenge:
Create the jukebox with less than 100 characters! Entries due by noon (GMT-6) on Monday, 6 August 2007. Short challenge, but the hard work's been done

Here's mine:

iTunes

What do I win?

[RickW]

Good effort, but you didn't use the UI.play_sound(filename) method.

I'm also a bit worried if you put your system sounds into iTunes

[Jim]

I was curious about the behavior of UI.play_sound. On my system, window 2000 pro, I wrote the core of the challenge as follows:

Dir["c;\winnt\media\*"].each {|s| UI.play_sound(s)}

This played all the sounds simultaneously. Is the behavior the same for everyone?

[RickW]

That's what I got...

[RickW]

Okay, round 2 is closed. TIG and I each got it down to 84 characters with the following code:

@tig said:

c=0;Dir["C:/WINDOWS/Media/*v"].each{|w|UI.play_sound w;UI.inputbox([w],["#{c+=1}"])}

@rickw said:

i=0;Dir["C:/WINDOWS/Media/*v"].each{|f|UI.play_sound f;puts"#{i+=1}: #{f}";sleep(3)}

I could have squeezed it to 83 by removing the space after the : in the puts statement, but decided against it.

Thanks to everyone who worked on this - it was a fun challenge, and we should do another one next month

[RickW]

Too late for deadline, but a shorter (77 characters) solution:

i=0;Dir["C:/WINDOWS/Media/*"].each{|f|UI.play_sound f;puts [i+=1,f];sleep(3)}

If anyone can reduce it from here, please post and enlighten us all

[daiku]

OBFUSCATORS! You should be trying to make it MORE readable, not less! (switch to high, crackly voice) You young punks don't know how good you've got it! Why, back in my day, all we had was ones and zeros. And sometimes we didn't even have zeros, and we had to use the letter O!

[Jim]

@rickw said:

Too late for deadline, but a shorter (77 characters) solution:

i=0;Dir["C:/WINDOWS/Media/*"].each{|f|UI.play_sound f;puts [i+=1,f];sleep(3)}

If anyone can reduce it from here, please post and enlighten us all

i=0;Dir["/WINDOWS/Media/*"].map{|f|UI.play_sound f;p i+=1,f;sleep 3}

That would be 68?

[RickW]

Nice job Jim!

Clark, that was too funny

[TIG]

Tweaking Jim's..

i=0;Dir["/*/Media/*v"].map{|f|UI.play_sound f;p i+=1,f;sleep 3}

That would be 63... AND it only plays wav files, not falling over on midi's etc... (62 otherwise)

[Jim]

@tig said:

Tweaking Jim's..

i=0;Dir["/*/Media/*v"].map{|f|UI.play_sound f;p i+=1,f;sleep 3}

That would be 63... AND it only plays wav files, not falling over on midi's etc... (62 otherwise)

Alright TIG!

A note about using Dir[""]: I didn't specify a file ending because I have files that end in .WAV. These files do not get played because they end in capital letters. The shortest way to get ALL the files was o use *.

[RickW]

hmm... the last two solutions won't play on my machine.

[Jim]

@rickw said:

hmm... the last two solutions won't play on my machine.

Both work for me.