Task 1: "Binary Palindrome

You are given a positive integer $N.

Write a script to find out if the binary representation of the given
integer is Palindrome. Print 1 if it is otherwise 0.

Example

  Input: $N = 5
  Output: 1 as binary representation of 5 is 101 which is Palindrome.

  Input: $N = 4
  Output: 0 as binary representation of 4 is 100 which is NOT Palindrome.
"

My notes: seems pretty easy.


Task 2: "Adventure of Knight
Submitted by: Cheok-Yin Fung

A knight is restricted to move on an 8x8 chessboard. The knight is
denoted by N and its way of movement is the same as what it is defined in
Chess. * represents an empty square. x represents a square with treasure.

The Knight's movement is unique. It may move two squares vertically
and one square horizontally, or two squares horizontally and one square
vertically (with both forming the shape of an L).

There are 6 squares with treasures.

Write a script to find the path such that Knight can capture all
treasures. The Knight starts from the top-left square.

      a b c d e f g h
    8 N * * * * * * * 8
    7 * * * * * * * * 7
    6 * * * * x * * * 6
    5 * * * * * * * * 5
    4 * * x * * * * * 4
    3 * x * * * * * * 3
    2 x x * * * * * * 2
    1 * x * * * * * * 1
      a b c d e f g h

BONUS: If you believe that your algorithm can output one of the shortest possible path.
"

My notes: looks reasonably straight forward, highly recursive.  Obvious way
to find a shortest possible path is to generate all paths of length L before
extending each path of length L to paths of length L+1.  NB: Why not allow
any number of treasures, not fixed at 6?  Got it working, although it takes
forever to solve larger problems.