I am back from my vacations, I was at nice places in Switzerland like Rhone Glacier, underground lake of Saint-Leonard, Salt Mines of Bex, Rhine Waterfalls and more …
To keep up with the fun, here is a little quiz :
You have the numbers 1-3-4-6 and you need to achieve the number 24. The allowed operations are +, -, * and /
If I try to achieve 49 it is easy :
SQL> /
Enter value for n1: 1
old 14: (SELECT &n1 n
new 14: (SELECT 1 n
Enter value for n2: 3
old 17: SELECT &n2 n
new 17: SELECT 3 n
Enter value for n3: 4
old 20: SELECT &n3 n
new 20: SELECT 4 n
Enter value for n4: 6
old 23: SELECT &n4 n
new 23: SELECT 6 n
Enter value for result: 49
old 143: ) = &result
new 143: ) = 49
result
------------------------------------
(4+3)*(6+1)
(3+4)*(6+1)
(6+1)*(4+3)
(1+6)*(4+3)
(6+1)*(3+4)
(1+6)*(3+4)
(4+3)*(1+6)
(3+4)*(1+6)
8 rows selected.
Elapsed: 00:00:11.28
But for 24 it is not that simple
at least for human !
Ok, in SQL I am using a plsql function to evaluate expression
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION lsc_eval (expr VARCHAR2)
RETURN NUMBER
IS
x NUMBER;
BEGIN
EXECUTE IMMEDIATE 'begin :x := ' || expr || ';end;'
USING OUT x;
RETURN x;
EXCEPTION
WHEN OTHERS
THEN
RETURN NULL;
END;
/
I will post the rest of the code as a comment later
I was honored to receive this trophy yesterday :

More results under http://www.sxv.ch/news_2006.php
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Sunday, November 26th, 2006, I will defend my Title in the Chinese Chess Swiss Championship.
It is free and open to anyone !

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I will be playing the The Geneva Bughouse Gathering 2006 tournament on Sat 19th August 2006. It is a variant of chess, very wild, played with four players in teams of two. The photo on my profile has been taken in the 2005 edition.
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at least we got one record in the world cup 2006. We are the first team in world cup history that got eliminated without receiving one goal
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this cow is funny, it is quite exceptional for Switzerland to play in the World Cup !
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I bought a new PC at Eastern. I have installed 100Gb partition for Linux and 100Gb for Windows. I tried Fedora Core 5 and OpenSuse 10.0, in 64bit mode.
I currently spend most of my “free” time to prepare the OCA Application Server certification, next friday (28th).
Tonight I borrowed a game from a friend : Unreal Tournament 2004. I haven’t play such a game since a long time, and I must say, I enjoyed it very much. I am just overtired now. The graphic is fast, it is easy to master (well, I played at the novice level) and it is something I would never recommend to my kids ! Just shooting everywhere …
Well, they are just too young now, but Dora is really mastering Memory Game and she can even write her name when she achieved a high score! Yesterday she had her fourth birthday.
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In case you like this game and live in Zurich, I will be playing the swiss championship tomorrow.
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