A long while back Code Golf posted up the Saving Time challenge in which you were required to transform input representing a digital clock into an ASCII analog representation in as few key strokes as possible. Here were my solutions in both PHP and Python:
PHP: 234 characters
<?fscanf(STDIN,'%d:%d',$h,$m);$s=array_combine(str_split('0b1a29384756'),array_fill(0,12,'o'));$s[$h=dechex($h>11?$h-12:$h)]='h';$s[$m=dechex($m>59?0:$m/5)]=$h==$m?'x':'m';vprintf("%9s
%5s%8s
%s%14s
%s%16s
%s%14s
%5s%8s
%9s",$s)
Not exactly the most beautiful code. If there’s a shorter way of converting from decimal to hex I’d probably cut 10 more characters or so.
Python: 232 characters
h,m=[int(x) for x in raw_input().split(':')];s=dict(zip('0b1a29384756','o'*12))
h="%x"%(h,h-12)[h>11]
m="%x"%(m/5,0)[m>59]
s[h]='h';s[m]='mx'[h==m];print "%9s\n%5s%8s\n\n %s%14s\n\n%s%16s\n\n %s%14s\n\n%5s%8s\n%9s"%tuple(s.values())
The Python code is in no way exemplary as it’s mostly a translation of the PHP code. What I can’t fathom is how someone could possibly solve this problem in 134 characters in PHP, the way eyepopslikeamosquito did. That is insane my friend. Probably ran a Perl solution through PHP’s shell command functions.
I spent some time working on the Saving Time challenge, too. My first approach was very similar to yours and checked in at 250 chars. After trying other approaches and exploring how PHP behaves in some pretty weird edge-cases, I’ve managed to get mine down to 187. Keep at it!