! script to solve waterpipes problem
!
LENGTH_GOAL = 5                       ! try to achieve this goal
READ\-MESSAGES houses.dat X Y         ! read in the house positions
SCALAR\FIT A B                        ! declare the free parameters
A = 1                                 ! initialize
B = 1                                 ! initialize
D[1:LEN(X)] = LENGTH_GOAL             ! 
DISTANCE = 'ABS(A*X+B-Y)/SQRT(A*A+1)' !
FIT\-MESSAGES D=SQRT(DISTANCE)        ! do the fit
FIT\UPDATE PIECES                     ! redo using calculated A and B
STATISTICS PIECES PSUM\SUM            ! the total length of pipe needed
DISPLAY 'Total length of pipe = '//RCHAR(PSUM,'%4.2f')