Local only Automation scripts

We discussed my some automation ideas yesterday by enabling platform specific api servers .
This is not complete without mentioning that APIs don't take the emphasis away from host specific actions and should remain as instance specific as possible. As an example use case, if we want to make the settings of a virtual machine to depend on the attributes of the virtual machine, we need not fetch it from an external data source but instead rely locally on the filesystem of the virtual machine such as when we read version or release. In windows, even Powershell is required to be local only and remote execution is not turned on by default. While this is done mainly for security and automation is internal such that security is not a primary concern, it is still good practice to observe local only execution.
We cite this self reliance example as a way to minimize code which is the hallmark of any good automation. In addition, it improves self sufficiency, reduces maintenance and the complicated requirements for cross platform operations.

#codingexercise
Given an initial and final arrangement of digits of a number, count the nunber of shifts. Assume all different digits

Int getShifts(list<int> initial, list<int> final)
{
Var common = final.GetLCS(initial);
Var diff = final.except(common);
Int sum = 0;
Foreach(var digit in diff)
{
Int i = initial.indexOf(digit);
Int j = final.indexOf(digit);
sum += math.abs(i-j);
}
Return sum;
}

LCS-LENGTH(X, Y)
m = X.length
n = Y.length
initialize b[m,n] and c[m,n] as new tables
for i = 1 to m
     c[i, 0] = 0
for j = 0 to n
     c[0,j] = 0
for i = 1 to m
      for j = 1 to n
            if xi == yi
               c[i,j] = c[i -1, j-1] + 1
               b[i,j] = up-left
            elseif c[i-1,j]  >= c[i, j-1]
               c[i,j] = c[i-1, j]
               b[i,j] = up
            else c[i,j] = c[i,j-1]
               b[i,j] = left
return c and b

and we print the LCS as
PRINT-LCS(b, X, i, j)
      if i == 0 or j == 0
        return
      if b[i,j] == up-left
         PRINT-LCS(b, X, i-1, j-1)
         print xi
      elseif b[i,j] == up
        PRINT-LCS(b, X, i-1, j)
      else PRINT-LCS(b,X, i,j-1)