Advent of Code 2024 in Python

This is my try on the Advent of code of 2024 challanges in Python.

Structure

• main.py - file: this file provides code to automatically create the needed files for each day and run the code.
• days - folder: the code for each day will be in the days folder as a dayX.py file.
• inputs - folder: all my input data for each day is saved the inputs folder as a inputX.txt file. I also have a test.txt file, that I use for the example input of each days puzzle.
• helpers - folder: contains my helpers.py and template.py files. The helper files has some functions to read the input data an I am pretty sure, I will add some other helping functions if I see that puzzles will need some generic functionality more than once. And the template file is my base for every days puzzle.

Create a Day

To create a new day you can run the following command:

python main.py create <day>

where <day> is the number of the day you want to create.

This will create a new file in the days folder called day<day>.py (with the content of the template.py file is existend) and a new file in the inputs folder called input<day>.txt.

(You can also create the files by hand if you want of course)

Run Days

There are two ways to run a day:

1. Run from main.py

Simply run the following command:

python main.py run <day> [test]

where <day> is the number of the day you want to run and [test] is an optional parameter to run the day with the test input file otherwise it will automatically use the day's input file.


Example for day1 with day1 input file:

python main.py run 1

Example for day1 with the test input:

python main.py run 1 test

2. Run from the day file

Simply run the wanted days file with python:

python .\days\day<day>.py [test]

where <day> is the number of the day you want to run and [test] is an optional parameter to run the day with the test input file otherwise it will automatically use the day's input file.


Example for day1 with day1 input file:

python .\days\day1.py

Example for day1 with the test input:

python .\days\day1.py test