Advent of Code Day #4

In day 4 we need to deal with passports (yay!) and check if they are valid for given criterias. The passworts do have multiple fields (key:value) and are divided by a newline.

ecl:gry pid:860033327 eyr:2020 hcl:#fffffd
byr:1937 iyr:2017 cid:147 hgt:183cm

iyr:2013 ecl:amb cid:350 eyr:2023 pid:028048884
hcl:#cfa07d byr:1929

hcl:#ae17e1 iyr:2013
eyr:2024
ecl:brn pid:760753108 byr:1931
hgt:179cm

The fields are given and expected like so:

byr (Birth Year)
iyr (Issue Year)
eyr (Expiration Year)
hgt (Height)
hcl (Hair Color)
ecl (Eye Color)
pid (Passport ID)
cid (Country ID)

Splitting them into “passports” is as easy as it gets.

Part 1 #

In part 1 our job is to check only if all the given fields are there for each passport ignoring their values. Since it is christmas and the North Pole Credentials do not submit a Country ID for their documents we are allowed to ignore cid.

To solve this I made a list with the required fields and loop over them and check if at least one field in the password has it - otherwise it is invalid.

Part 2 #

Now it is a bit more complex. We have given criterias for our fields and additionally to the required fields check we need to check if the criterias match.

I converted the criterias into ruby ranges and regular expressions (see line 14 to 22). Then I looped over every field as in part 1 but now I split them into key/value pairs. After that, based on my criterias, I either matched them against the regex or the range.