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§Trench Map
This is a cellular automata problem, similar to Conway’s Game of Life, except that the rules are encoded in the enhancement algorithm string, instead of being statically specified. Each round the initial square area of cells expands by at most one in each direction, so we can store the cell in a fixed size array with enough space on either side to expand into.
The interesting nuance is handling the edge cells when all 9 cells are empty (index 0) or all 9 cell are active (index 511). The sample data encodes a blank cell in both scenarios. My input encoded an active cell for index 0 and a blank cell for index 511, meaning that each turn the edge cells toggle from set to unset.
The algorithm keeps track of the bounds of the expanding square and supplies a default value,
that in the example case is always zero, but in the real data toggles between zero and one.
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