On: PG's essays, ranked "Google-style"

[RiderOfGiraffes]

Here's a stripped down version of the "LayoutGraph" script. In essence, layout the graph 100 times and score each attempt according to the size of the biggest box. Save the attempt in a file with a name that has the score in it, then pick off the best. That way I can compare attempts with each other while it runs.

    GraphName=$1
    GraphSize=$2

    echo Laying out graph $1

    LayoutParms="-Gstart=random -Nshape=box -Goverlap=false -Gsplines=true"

    for n in 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0
    do
        for m in 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0
        do
            neato ${GraphName}.dot $LayoutParms -Gsize="${GraphSize}" -Tpng -o ${GraphName}.png -Timap -o ${GraphName}.map
            score=`sed "s/,/ /g" ${GraphName}.map | gawk '{printf("%04d\n",$5-$3)}' | sort -rn | head -1`
            mv ${GraphName}.png ${GraphName}.png_$score
            mv ${GraphName}.map ${GraphName}.map_$score
            echo $n$m $score `ls -l ${GraphName}.png_* | tail -1`
        done
    done

    cp `ls ${GraphName}.png_0??? | tail -1` ${GraphName}.png
    cp `ls ${GraphName}.map_0??? | tail -1` ${GraphName}.map

    ls -r ${GraphName}.png_0??? | tail -n +2 | xargs rm
    ls -r ${GraphName}.map_0??? | tail -n +2 | xargs rm

[slug → RiderOfGiraffes]

A small tip for the for loops:

  for n in {9..0}; do echo $n ; done

or

  for n in $(seq 9 -1 0); do echo $n ; done

[RiderOfGiraffes → slug]

Cool - thanks. I did actually know that, but I never got around to changing it to the more efficient version, and it's nice to be reminded.