QIR (Quantum Intermediate Representation)

Nah, just kidding - I used Rust. The only tricky part seemed to be finding time on a Sunday to get it coded!

Part 1 I swept down with a bool array for beams and part 2 I swept up with a score array and summed when it split (joined).

struct Teleporter(String);

impl Teleporter {
    fn new(s: String) -> Self {
        Self(s)
    }

    fn start_pos(line: &str) -> Result<usize> {
        line.find('S').ok_or_eyre("Start not found")
    }

    fn splits(&self) -> Result<usize> {
        let mut input = self.0.lines();
        let start_line = input.next().ok_or_eyre("No start line")?;
        let start = Self::start_pos(start_line)?;

        let mut beams = vec![false; start_line.len()];
        beams[start] = true;

        let mut splits = 0;
        for line in input {
            for (i, ch) in line.bytes().enumerate() {
                if beams[i] && ch == b'^' {
                    splits += 1;
                    beams[i] = false;
                    beams[i - 1] = true;
                    beams[i + 1] = true;
                }
            }
        }
        Ok(splits)
    }

    fn timelines(&self) -> Result<usize> {
        let mut input = self.0.lines();
        let start_line = input.next().ok_or_eyre("No start line")?;
        let start = Self::start_pos(start_line)?;

        let mut num_paths = vec![1; start_line.len()];
        for line in input.rev() {
            for (i, c) in line.bytes().enumerate() {
                if c == b'^' || c == b'S' {
                    num_paths[i] = num_paths[i - 1] + num_paths[i + 1];
                }
            }
        }
        Ok(num_paths[start])
    }
}