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Thursday February 14, 2008

Somebody's Alphametic Problem Solver

In my previous post, I said I'd been modifying a version of a alphametic problem solver from Anuj Prateek and Upendra Singh. According to the comments in the code, this was written by them in 2006.

After googling around some more, I found very similar code by Naoyuki Tamura. In fact that version is much nicer. Clean. Well written. Proper indentation and comments.

Hmm. Makes me wonder whether Prateek and Singh stole Mr. Tamura's code and passed it off as their own, in order to get a good grade in some CS class. If that's the case, then shame on you.

( Feb 14 2008, 02:38:20 PM PST ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [3]

Comments:

Yes, that code is not ours, and is indeed a code from Internet, which we modified a bit for our use, as probably you are doing. Rather you can get a number of version of similar code on internet, since it is a very common problem in AI. Lastly, I guess somehow a wrong message has passed that the code is all ours, we are sorry for that.

Posted by Anuj Prateek on February 16, 2008 at 12:16 AM PST #

You "guess somehow"? It's got your name in it,
which to anybody stumbling on it (like me)
suggests that you wrote it.

The original had the these four lines in crypt.h:

char *version = "Cryptarithmetic Puzzle Solver 1.4 (Oct. 21, 1999)";
char *copyright = "Copyright (C) Naoyuki Tamura (tamura@kobe-u.ac.jp)";
char *organization = "Department of CS, Kobe University, Japan";
char *www = "http://bach.seg.kobe-u.ac.jp/tamura.html";

Your version has:

char *version = "ALPHAMATIC PUZZLE SOLVER - TEST (MARCH 24, 2006)";
char *copyright = "Copyleft (C) Anuj Prateek & Upendra Singh ";
char *organization = "Virtual World, India";
char *www = "http://www.geocities.com/anuj_prateekin";
char *email="anuj.prateek&gmail.com, upendra.bits@gmail.com";

No mention at all that Naoyuki Tamura wrote it.
The least you could do is leave his original
copyright message in.

Posted by Rich Burridge on February 16, 2008 at 08:22 AM PST #

Thank You Rich Burridge, I have included the name in the code and have uploaded the same at the Internet source.

Posted by Anuj Prateek on February 16, 2008 at 09:59 PM PST #