advent-of-code-2023/README.md

# Advent Of Code Zig Template

This repo provides a template for Advent of Code participants using Zig.  It contains a main file for each day, a build.zig file set up with targets for each day, and Visual Studio Code files for debugging.

This template tracks the master branch of Zig, *not* 0.8.1.  It may not work with older versions.

## How to use this template:

The src/ directory contains a main file for each day.  Put your code there.  The build command `zig build dayXX [target and mode options] -- [program args]` will build and run the specified day.  You can also use `zig build install_dayXX [target and mode options]` to build the executable for a day and put it into `zig-out/bin` without executing it.  By default this template does not link libc, but you can set `should_link_libc` to `true` in build.zig to change that.  If you have files with tests, add those files to the list of test files in build.zig.  The command `zig build test` will run tests in all of these files.

Each day contains a decl like this:
```zig
const data = @embedFile("../data/day05.txt");
```
To use this system, save your input for a day in the data/ directory with the appropriate name.  Reference this decl to load the contents of that file as a compile time constant.  If a day has no input, or you prefer not to embed it in this form, simply don't reference this decl.  If it's unused, it will not try to load the file, and it won't error if the file does not exist.

This repo also contains Visual Studio Code project files for debugging.  These are meant to work with the C/C++ plugin.  There is a debug configuration for each day.  By default all days are built in debug mode, but this can be changed by editing `.vscode/tasks.json` if you have a need for speed.

If you would like to contribute project files for other development environments, please send a PR.

## Setting up ZLS

Zig has a reasonably robust language server, which can provide autocomplete for VSCode and many other features.  It can help significantly with exploring the std lib and suggesting parameter completions.  To set it up, make sure you have an up-to-date master build of Zig (which you can [download here](https://ziglang.org/download/)), and then run the following commands:

```
git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/zigtools/zls
cd zls
zig build -Drelease-fast
zig-out/bin/zls configure
```

The last command will direct you to documentation for connecting it to your preferred editor.  If you are using VSCode, the documentation [can be found here](https://github.com/zigtools/zls/wiki/Installing-for-Visual-Studio-Code).