Post date: Apr 26, 2014 12:25:13 AM
"Find the greatest product of five consecutive numbers in a giant 1000 digit number."
Loading the table must be done row by agonizing row, but after that is done, this problem actually is one that SQL is a fitting language to solve. It's a very simple query.
DECLARE @BigNum varchar(1000) =
'73167176531330624919225119674426574742355349194934' +
'96983520312774506326239578318016984801869478851843' +
'85861560789112949495459501737958331952853208805511' +
'12540698747158523863050715693290963295227443043557' +
'66896648950445244523161731856403098711121722383113' +
'62229893423380308135336276614282806444486645238749' +
'30358907296290491560440772390713810515859307960866' +
'70172427121883998797908792274921901699720888093776' +
'65727333001053367881220235421809751254540594752243' +
'52584907711670556013604839586446706324415722155397' +
'53697817977846174064955149290862569321978468622482' +
'83972241375657056057490261407972968652414535100474' +
'82166370484403199890008895243450658541227588666881' +
'16427171479924442928230863465674813919123162824586' +
'17866458359124566529476545682848912883142607690042' +
'24219022671055626321111109370544217506941658960408' +
'07198403850962455444362981230987879927244284909188' +
'84580156166097919133875499200524063689912560717606' +
'05886116467109405077541002256983155200055935729725' +
'71636269561882670428252483600823257530420752963450'
-- Load the number into a table
CREATE TABLE #Working (i INT PRIMARY KEY NOT NULL IDENTITY(1,1), d INT NOT NULL)
WHILE 1 = 1
BEGIN
IF @BigNum = ''
BREAK
INSERT INTO #Working (d)
SELECT LEFT(@BigNum,1)
SET @BigNum = STUFF(@BigNum, 1, 1, '')
END -- While
-- Solve the problem
SELECT MAX(w1.d * w2.d * w3.d * w4.d * w5.d)
FROM #Working w1
INNER JOIN #Working w2 ON w2.i = w1.i + 1
INNER JOIN #Working w3 ON w3.i = w2.i + 1
INNER JOIN #Working w4 ON w4.i = w3.i + 1
INNER JOIN #Working w5 ON w5.i = w4.i + 1
DROP TABLE #Working