[Icfp04-discuss] Ant optimizers?

[Jack Diederich]

Did anyone write a state optimizer?  I didn't, but I just banged
one out (50 lines of python, I'm sure someone could write a one-liner
in perl).  If two lines are the same, anyone that goes to one could
go to the other instead.  These two are interchangeable:

line 10:  Sense Ahead 10 15 Food
..
line 99:  Sense Ahead 10 15 Food

So any place w/ a target of 99 could have a target of 10 instead

On *nix, to find the _minimum_ number of duplicate states,
> sort -u name.ant | wc -l

But once you do that substitution, some more lines are likely identical.
Rinse and repeat.

The sample ant goes from 400 states down to 160.
The fatest ant I've seen (phANTomas-2.ant) goes from 8671 lines down
to 949,  11% of it's original size.

Oops, I just checked dunkosmiloolump-1.ant and it reduces by zero,
so at least one team wrote an ant optimizer (either post optimizer
or built into their generator).

-Jack