Advent of Code - Day 7

Puzzle

--- Day 7: The Treachery of Whales ---

A giant whale has decided your submarine is its next meal, and it's much faster than you are. There's nowhere to run!

Suddenly, a swarm of crabs (each in its own tiny submarine - it's too deep for them otherwise) zooms in to rescue you! They seem to be preparing to blast a hole in the ocean floor; sensors indicate a massive underground cave system just beyond where they're aiming!

The crab submarines all need to be aligned before they'll have enough power to blast a large enough hole for your submarine to get through. However, it doesn't look like they'll be aligned before the whale catches you! Maybe you can help?

There's one major catch - crab submarines can only move horizontally.

You quickly make a list of the horizontal position of each crab (your puzzle input). Crab submarines have limited fuel, so you need to find a way to make all of their horizontal positions match while requiring them to spend as little fuel as possible.

For example, consider the following horizontal positions:

16,1,2,0,4,2,7,1,2,14
This means there's a crab with horizontal position 16, a crab with horizontal position 1, and so on.

Each change of 1 step in horizontal position of a single crab costs 1 fuel. You could choose any horizontal position to align them all on, but the one that costs the least fuel is horizontal position 2:

Move from 16 to 2: 14 fuel
Move from 1 to 2: 1 fuel
Move from 2 to 2: 0 fuel
Move from 0 to 2: 2 fuel
Move from 4 to 2: 2 fuel
Move from 2 to 2: 0 fuel
Move from 7 to 2: 5 fuel
Move from 1 to 2: 1 fuel
Move from 2 to 2: 0 fuel
Move from 14 to 2: 12 fuel
This costs a total of 37 fuel. This is the cheapest possible outcome; more expensive outcomes include aligning at position 1 (41 fuel), position 3 (39 fuel), or position 10 (71 fuel).

Determine the horizontal position that the crabs can align to using the least fuel possible. How much fuel must they spend to align to that position?*

My solution

package main;

import java.io.File;
import java.util.*;

public class Puzzle {
  public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
    File input = new File("/Users/files/input.txt");
    Scanner scanner = new Scanner(input);

    List<Integer> numbers = new ArrayList<>();
    List<Integer> values = new ArrayList<>();

   while (scanner.hasNext()) {
      String[] arrayOfNumbers = scanner.nextLine().split(",");
      for (String number : arrayOfNumbers) {
        numbers.add(Integer.parseInt(number));
      }
    }

    int total = 0;
    for (int i = 0; i < numbers.size(); i++) {
      total = 0;
      for (int j = 0; j < numbers.size(); j++) {

        if (i > numbers.get(j)) {
          int difference = i - numbers.get(j);
          total += difference;
        } else if (numbers.get(j) > i) {
          int difference = numbers.get(j) - i;
          total += difference;
        } else {
          int difference = i - numbers.get(j);
          total += difference;
        }
      }
      values.add(total);
    }


    int minValue = Collections.min(values);

    System.out.println(minValue);
  }
}

*Source: https://adventofcode.com/2021/day/7