Task — Closest palindrome

You are given a string, $str, which is an integer. Write a script to find out the closest palindrome, not including itself. If there are more than one then return the smallest. The closest is defined as the absolute difference minimized between two integers.

Examples

Example 1
Input: $str = "123"
Output: "121"

Example 2
Input: $str = "2"
Output: "1"
There are two closest palindrome "1" and "3". 
Therefore we return the smallest "1".

Example 3
Input: $str = "1400"
Output: "1441"

Example 4
Input: $str = "1001"
Output: "999"

Analysis

I toyed with a number of clever solutions to this, but concluded that the simplest one was probably fast enough.

My solution therefore is to look at $str - 1 and $str + 1, and then $str - 2 and $str + 2, and so on. The first of these that is palindromic is the answer, and by doing - before +, that will yield the smaller answer as demanded.

In many cases, particularly for large numbers, the answer will follow the pattern:

abcdefghijk → abcdefedcba

but that is not always the closest palindrome: for example the nearest palindrome to 9820189013 is 9820220289 (difference 31276) and not 9820110289 (difference 78724).

As my solution comes up with the answer in under 2 seconds for 12-digit numbers I didn't pursue this further.

Try it 

Try running the script with any input:

Your $str =

example: 314159

⤡

#!/usr/bin/perl

# Blog: http://ccgi.campbellsmiths.force9.co.uk/challenge

use v5.26;    # The Weekly Challenge - 2024-09-23
use utf8;     # Week 288 - task 1 - Closest palindrome
use warnings; # Peter Campbell Smith
binmode STDOUT, ':utf8';

closest_palindrome(5);
closest_palindrome(123);
closest_palindrome(1001);
closest_palindrome(1400);
closest_palindrome(987654321);
closest_palindrome(int(rand(10000000000)));

sub closest_palindrome {
    
    my ($less, $more, $j, $test);
    
    # start counting at $str ± 1
    $less = $_[0] - 1;
    $more = $less + 2;
    
    # loop outwards from $str
    for $j (1 .. $less) {
        $test = reverse($less);
        last if $test eq $less --;
        $test = reverse($more);
        last if $test eq $more ++;
    }
    
    say qq[\nInput:  \$str = '$_[0]'];
    say qq[Output:        '$test'];
}

Output

Input:  $str = '5'
Output:        '4'

Input:  $str = '123'
Output:        '121'

Input:  $str = '1001'
Output:        '999'

Input:  $str = '1400'
Output:        '1441'

Input:  $str = '987654321'
Output:        '987656789'

Input:  $str = '9610784061'
Output:        '9610770169'