BUU,

SHAME ON YOU!

When you mentioned in #perl last night that you intended to make a SoPW post about this, I assumed you would have also mentioned that it was for a job application. I haven't had a chance to refine my non-regex solution on my scratch pad, but here it is for the record.

#!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; print longest_palindrome( 'sacascascsacascascascadvgkgjsflfjgfk' ); sub longest_palindrome { my %lookup; my ($index, $record) = (-1, 0); push @{ $lookup{ substr($_[0], $_, 1) } } , $_ for 0 .. (length $_ +[0]) - 1; for my $letter ( keys %lookup ) { my $last = $#{ $lookup{ $letter } }; for my $start ( 0 .. $last - 1 ) { for my $end ( reverse ( $start + 1 .. $last ) ) { my $pos = $lookup{ $letter }[ $start ]; my $length = $lookup{ $letter }[ $end ] - $pos + 1; if ( $length > $record ) { my $palindrome = substr($_[0], $pos, $length); if ( $palindrome eq reverse $palindrome ) { ($index, $record) = ($pos, $length); last; } } } } } return substr($_[0], $index, $record); } [download]

Update: While I do not know if you intended to use any of the responses to your advantage in applying for the job, I do know you got the problem from the ad as you gave me the link in IRC. Additionally, you indicated you intended to apply for the job. Shame on me for not wording my admonishment better.

Update 2: Corrected another logic flaw pointed out by ccn, which makes it even slower :-(

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