Advent of Code 2024

I'm back for AoC 2024, this time in PHP!

Reflections

Went well generally speaking! I can see why people think PHP is a meme language, though there were some very useful functions I liked such as var_dump and str_replace.

I personally struggled with the Part 2 of the following days:

• Day 14
• Day 17
• Day 21
• Day 24

Input

All input is read from TXT files under the inputs/ folder that you need to make prior to executing any code.

Environment Details

My PHP version:

$ php -v
PHP 8.4.1 (cli) (built: Nov 20 2024 09:48:35) (NTS)
Copyright (c) The PHP Group
Zend Engine v4.4.1, Copyright (c) Zend Technologies
    with Zend OPcache v8.4.1, Copyright (c), by Zend Technologies

To install the data structures extension:

$ pecl install ds

I use Composer to install 3rd-party libraries. Follow these steps to install Composer if you haven't already. Assuming a local installation, run:

$ php composer.phar install

To execute a specific PHP file I do:

$ php hello.php
Hello, World!