[lloydatkinson]

I’ve often wondered why AOC and hackerrank and the like have you solving the required problem AND the implicit task of parsing the input.

[pitched]

The task of parsing the input is the only transferable skill in the whole thing.

[nikolay]

But you can't do a decent job if you want to earn points. Parsing requires diligence and less assumption. Add one extra space, and the whole AOC parsing leads to unpredictable results.

[lloydatkinson]

One of my solutions last year, with F#, was very aware of bad input and was robust against it.

Here's a part of it:

        type Shape =
            | Rock
            | Paper
            | Scissors

        let parseCharacters (line: string) =
            let onlySingleCharacters (a: string, b: string) = a.Length = 1 && b.Length = 1

            match line.Split() with
            | [| a; b |] when onlySingleCharacters (a, b) ->
                match a[0], b[0] with
                | 'A', 'X' -> Some(Rock, Rock)
                | 'A', 'Y' -> Some(Rock, Paper)
                | 'A', 'Z' -> Some(Rock, Scissors)
                | 'B', 'X' -> Some(Paper, Rock)
                | 'B', 'Y' -> Some(Paper, Paper)
                | 'B', 'Z' -> Some(Paper, Scissors)
                | 'C', 'X' -> Some(Scissors, Rock)
                | 'C', 'Y' -> Some(Scissors, Paper)
                | 'C', 'Z' -> Some(Scissors, Scissors)
                | _ -> None
            | _ -> None

        let rec readLines () =
            let line = Console.ReadLine()

            match line with
            | null
            | "" -> []
            | _ ->
                match parseCharacters line with
                | Some parsedLine -> parsedLine :: readLines ()
                | None -> readLines ()