The Web Bin Packer

About

What is this?

This is a bin packer. It uses sorted packing and the first fit algorithm. It can be used to find a method of distributing chunks of varying size over a number of containers of a specific size. The worst case result is never suboptimal by more than 22%, which is probably the best you can hope for without using brute force.

What about the data I enter?

Do not trust The Web Bin Packer not to save your data for manual analysis or out of curiosity. It probably will save it. If you don't like this, you can download the source code (The Web Bin Packer is Free Software) from the software section of arneb.de and run your own. You'll need a webserver (such as The Apache HTTP Server) with Perl support, though.

Give me an example, how to use this thing.

Ok. Example:

• Set the "Field separation" "Type" to "Use single whitespaces as field separators".
• Set "Field position" to 1 (2 - 1, because the first index is 0).
• Set the "Size of containers" to 10.
• Use the following as the input for "Chunk list":

  Size: 16 Description: This thing is too large.
  Size: 2 Description: This thing is quite small.
  Size: -5 Description: This thing would like to be a hole, but it counts more like a zero.
  Size: 8 Desc: Let's break the Convention.
  This one won't work; actually it will, but it won't take up space.
  Foo: 4 More on the small side.
  And 7 knights take up space too.
  But 4 more take up less space than 7.
  Now 3 others join.

• Try it out. You will see what happens.

Input