On this page:
<day02>
2.1 How much paper is needed to wrap the boxes?
<day02-setup>
<day02-q1>
2.2 How much ribbon is needed to wrap the boxes?
<day02-q1>2
2.3 Testing Day 2
<day02-test>
7.7

2 Day 2

 (require aoc-racket/day02) package: aoc-racket

The puzzle. Our input is a list of strings that represent dimensions of rectangular boxes.

2.1 How much paper is needed to wrap the boxes?

According to the problem, the paper needed to wrap a present is the surface area of the box (= the sum of the areas of the sides) plus the area of the smallest side.

First we need to parse our input file into a list of box dimensions. We’ll model each box as a list of three dimensions. (The question doesn’t need us to keep height / width / depth straight, so we won’t worry about it.)

Then we have a traditional setup for the devastating one-two punch of map and apply. We’ll write a function to compute surface area from box dimensions. Then we’ll map that function across the list of boxes, and finally apply the + operator to our list of results to get the answer.

(require racket rackunit)
(provide (all-defined-out))
(define (string->boxes str)
  (for/list ([ln (in-list (string-split str "\n"))])
            (map string->number (string-split ln "x"))))

(define (box->paper box)
  (match-define (list x y z) box)
  (define sides (list (* x y) (* y z) (* x z)))
  (+ (* 2 (apply + sides)) (apply min sides)))
 
(define (q1 str)
  (define boxes (string->boxes str))
  (apply + (map box->paper boxes)))

2.2 How much ribbon is needed to wrap the boxes?

According to the problem, the ribbon needed is the perimeter of the smallest side plus the volume of the box.

We take the same approach, with a new box->ribbon function.

(define (box->ribbon box)
  (match-define (list x y z) box)
  (define (perimeter dim1 dim2) (* 2 (+ dim1 dim2)))
  (define perimeters
    (list (perimeter x y) (perimeter y z) (perimeter x z)))
  (+ (apply min perimeters) (* x y z)))
 
(define (q2 str)
  (define boxes (string->boxes str))
  (apply + (map box->ribbon boxes)))

2.3 Testing Day 2

(module+ test
  (define input-str (file->string "day02-input.txt"))
  (check-equal? (q1 input-str) 1586300)
  (check-equal? (q2 input-str) 3737498))