The Nineteenth Byte

Quine is love, quine is life (well, almost) Yes, another Life challenge. Challenge Write a program that, when run with a pair of numbers representing the dimensions of a Game of Life board, outputs a program which contains a string representation of a Game of Life board in its source code. W...

^ Can you guys please critique the idea?

2:17 AM

@octatoan most of the specification seems to be missing

for example, what determines whether a cell is on or off?

Uh-oh.

Good catch.

2:54 AM

@feersum updated, take a look at it.

0

Quine is love, quine is life (well, almost) Yes, another Life challenge. Inspired by this. Challenge Write a program (the generator) that, when given a representation of a Game of Life board on STDIN (or in a file if you like), outputs a program which contains a string representation of a Game...

Now I'm just confused :|

"Write a program (the generator) that, when given a representation of a Game of Life board on STDIN (or in a file if you like), outputs a program which contains a string representation of a Game of Life board in its source code."

Does the output program need to do anything?

ok, i found it "the new program should output its own source code"

6:33 AM

@Optimizer Not bowling? :P

7:13 AM

I have to wake up before I can bowl properly ;)

:P

7:35 AM

@feersum You deleted your bowling post?

I have a much shorter version

Ah, right. Look forward to seeing it then :)

and learned null bytes don't actually seem to work

not sure how it tested successfully once

That's weird...

7:48 AM

finally. came out to 92

Nice use of translate :P

poor man's regex

with maximum length of 1 char

Does it have to be a unicode string?

yep

Ah k

... yeah I don't think I can shave off another 16 with this method :P

7:50 AM

is your input a string?

no, array of integers

sorry, needs to be a string

really?

yup

Yeah it does... actually if mine was an array of ints I'd have 91

7:51 AM

"Input: A space-separated string that lists a nonempty subset of the numbers 1 though 10 in order."

wacky

well it wasn't 100% catastrophic...now at 102

Nice :P

oh wait, I don't need to split

I think you do, cos 10

Oh wait

You're doing 0 to 9? Or 1 to 10?

gonna go back to 0

8:01 AM

Right

that's what I was doing originally, but gave up on null byte problems

haha I think I can get 92 again

Oh? :o

already posted

I don't think it works for "10" still

>>> print (lambda a:u"G H I @\n D E F\n  B C\n   A".translate({64+n:46+33*(`n`in a)for n in range(10)}))("10")
. . . O
 . . .
  . .
   O

oh right...that's what the split was useful for

8:09 AM

Yeah :P

still I should be able to do n%10 or somethnig and not split

Well you can't mod the string without converting though

ok not that, but some hack

Ahaha k, will look forward to that then :P

like adding a space on the end

8:13 AM

You'd have to add a space to two things though - is doing +" " twice worth it?

yes

That's as long as .split() :P

split was 102 I believe

or did I do it wrong?

I had to use 1 through 10 with split

which is worse than 0 through 9

because range

Ah right

I was thinking a.split(), I dunno

But yeah 1-10

I have a split version in the edit history

but now actually I think I should drop range

and use 9*99 to get a list of digits as strings

that's suppose to have backticks

8:21 AM

:P I'm impressed

My highest voted, and also my first, post on this site was the program print 8**999 to spam a bunch of digits

perfect demonstration of how votes are invariably inversely proportional to effort

If it was Python 3 you could probs do 1/81

Ahaha yeah codegolf is a bit like that...

that wasn't enough for the specific problem

the point was that it contained all numbers from 0 to 100

I meant for this one

oh

I can do that in Python 2 also

very nice idea

8:28 AM

Integer division though?

it's just the same length in 2

but

9**-2

Yeah :/

I wonder if anything stupid is possible, like str(int) or some function that happens to have the digits (phone keyboard doesn't have backticks)

I guess it'd probably mess up translate though

yeah spaces...

actually, there's no reason the pins need to be digits now is there?

I could use some random letters

Aha :P

what's the shortest thing that has 10 distinct chars when stringified...

8:34 AM

The function id? Just guessing, not at my laptop

it has no have no spaces though

Oh

Do they have to be consecutive chars?

everything has spaces, prob not gonna work

no, no need for consecutive

This would be an awesome time to use Ellipsis but not enough chars :(

that also requires 3

Python 3

8:36 AM

Does it?

yep

Damn

only 5 chars there anyway

One day I'll find an actual use for Ellipsis, I swear...

How many is {1}, as in the set?

haha yes that works

I can get 10 with a 3-digit number

8:42 AM

Is that any better than 9**99 though?

can use {1.}

Nice!

except..that was all totally delusional, since the characters have to match the input string

too tired lol

it was fun exercise though

... oh well it was a fun exercise :P

ninjaaa

8:43 AM

:P

When in doubt, remember that Python sets have a long repr :P

... is our lesson for today

9:45 AM

@ProgramFOX well... 6 flags > 5 close votes ;) ... I really don't see any harm in doing both.

ProgramFOX

True... at least if those 5 people can also delete vote.

I thought it was worth mentioning anyway; when PPCG got spam a previous time there were people who flagged with an "other" flag and didn't know about the spam flag.

haha okay

10:17 AM

@MartinBüttner I got 38 bytes

why are you not posting then?

trying to reduce below 31 before I post

because there is a 31 byte already. and i am already late, so better golf

lol

good luck with that

hm 43

New Sandboxed Posts

10:36 AM

0

Music: What's the name of this chord? It's the reverse of Music: what's in this chord?. This time the input is a list of notes in a chord, and your program should output which chord it is. Your program should support the following triadic chords. Examples are given with root C. Chords with othe...

that's kinda similar to one of the suggest audio challenge ideas

@feersum eccept it's music theory only, and no audio processing

I know, but it would be annoying to have such similar ones

yes

Although I realised it'd probably be like Peter's sine wave idea, but slightly harder

10:49 AM

yes

New Sandboxed Posts

11:04 AM

0

A table of quines You will write n (n>=2) programs, each with length n. The kth program should output the kth character of each program, ordered by the program number. For example, in this submission: ABC DEF GHI Program ABC should output ADG, and program DEF GHI should output BEH CFI respec...

@MartinBüttner lol, i had a bug, and now I am at 41 too

:D

I'll post now as i have to go anyways.

11:32 AM

@Optimizer hm, why did you delete it? found another bug?

yeah, in each row, index were reversed

VisualMelon

12:23 PM

nah, he just wants that nice hat

I'm pretty sure he had that one for ages.

12:41 PM

what's with Pyth!

that was close

me n u ?

no, 30 minutes

oh

no but srsly, what's with Pyth. 21 in CJam is 13 in Pyth

:(

yeah

lol, if I switch to filter instead of sort, I also get 22 ^^

12:47 PM

:D

10 o.O

20 :(

fails for the second-to-last test case

[0 0 0 0]
[12 312 33 12]
[1 2 3 4 5 6 7]
[22 33 1 2 4]
[1000 2 2 2]
[23 42 12 92 39 46 23 56 31 12 43 23 54 23 56 73 35 73 42 12 10 15 35 23 12 42]]
{:Q,),{_Qf<1b>!},W=N}/

oh and for the third one, too

ah.

I need to work on the bowling thing once i get back home.

1:08 PM

I'm still confused when one can use input() as part of a loop in Python without having it be called repeatedly

for example, sum(n<x for x in input()) seems to call input repeatedly

but for x in input():... seems to only call it once

Interesting... maybe because it's a generator?

either way should only be once

sum([n<x for x in input()]) also calls it repeatedly

could not reproduce

Neither

1:11 PM

has anyone heard of the language TECO

It's ancient, and awful

I think it would be fun to golf in

@feersum @Sp3000 weird. here's my exact code in Python 3

n=0
while n<sum([n<x for x in eval(input())]):n+=1
print(n)

dur, it's in a while loop

headslap

now do i feel silly

i'm ... gonna go to sleep

lol I just found a really obscure 1-byte save in mathematica

I only need one more answer on code-golf now...

@MartinBüttner Try this question

1:23 PM

:D

:D

Maybe you should post a question and answer it :P

I can wait...

@feersum taco ? :D

taco TECO

err

that

2:09 PM

@xnor can I have leading whitspaces in the bowling ?

nope

like pastebin.mozilla.org/8104939

Do you mean before all of the pins or at the start of each row?

before all. see that link

can I have an infinite number of leading whitespaces?

I promise to print out the pins afterward

"The formation should be flush with the left of the screen."

^^ that

If it wasn't for that I could save about 10 bytes or so :(

2:20 PM

alright 40 bytes.

wow, 14 bytes in CJam

on least h problem

I was working on a solution like that, but couldn't figure it out... I'm always reluctant to keep track of data in variables. :/

hm it doesn't seem to work though

why ?

which test case ?

wait, bowling or least h ?

3 and 5

h

actually, it works

looks like PPCG's activity has increased considerably this year... about a 3rd of all questions has been posted in the last 7ish months.

Geobits

2:40 PM

Blame code trolling and the HNQ formula changing I think. Together they brought a ton of traffic, and plenty stuck around after trolling was banned.

The KotH spree in late spring probably helped, too.

and Calvin's Hobbies.

Geobits

Playing with tigers?

lol

2:57 PM

lol

@MartinBüttner what did you mess up in testing that 14 byte one ?

I reset W to 0 instead of -1

hmm

hm?

hmm = I see

There ought to be a smaller way for the bowling one ..

LOL I answered 15 more code-golf questions than @MartinBüttner . Tells how much I work in office :D

oh you mean in the last 30 days

3:46 PM

I did not see, what did u remove ? :P

4:12 PM

Can I please get some feedback on my sandbox post?

@octatoan It's too hard to read the whole thing so maybe I am missing something, but I don't see why not to make a replicator program that dies out after 1 generation

That doesn't fit the spec. Your replicator program must continue working and not "die out" (I assume that means it produces invalid output) like that.

why does that mean it quits working?

I mean a quine that contains an empty string in it somewhere

How then would you define "replicator program that dies out"?

4:28 PM

what does the 'string representation' mean? does that refer to the entire source code?

No, a string representation of the Game of Life board.

In this line, right? "outputs a program which contains a string representation of a Game of Life board in its source code"

Example: igoro.com/archive/self-printing-game-of-life-in-c

Ilmari Karonen

@octatoan It's really quite unclear what you're asking for. I see (at least) two possible interpretations: 1) The program should read a GoL board as input, and output its own source code plus the next generation of the board (which, presumably, could just be in comments or in a string); or 2) the program should contain a GoL board in its source code, should read no input, and should output its own source code, with the board advanced by one generation.

Also, what is all that "width-one border" stuff about? Is the source code supposed to be squeezed into (the live cells on) the GoL board? What if there are no live cells in the next generation?

Let me try clearing it up.
You have to write a program called the **generator**. This will be given a representation of a GoL board as input in the format shown there.
The generator will output a replicator which contains a representation of the input state of the board in its source code. When run, the replicator should output itself, with one change: the board should now represent the next generation. Ad infinitum.

igoro.com/archive/self-printing-game-of-life-in-c should help.

The page contains an example of what I would consider an appropriate replicator.

The generators will probably not be very hard to write.

Ilmari Karonen

Ah... I think I see what you mean. So the main part of the challenge is what I described as #2 above, and the "generator" is there just for testing convenience?

If so, you might want to describe the requirements for the "replicator" program first, without muddling things up with the "generator" part, and then just briefly mention that e.g. "For testing convenience, you should also write a 'generator' program that reads a list of live cell coordinates (describe input format here) and outputs an instance of the replicator code, with the board initialized according to the given input."

4:45 PM

Yes.

I'll be sure to do that, thanks.

Ilmari Karonen

I might not even bother including the generator length in the score, although it's up to you.

Hmm... also, the size of the replicator is going to depend on the board size, so you should probably pick a specific board size for scoring purposes.

Maybe 60 x 20 or something like that.

You could still require the generator to work for any board size up to some large-ish limit, but it'd be easiest to score things with a fixed board size.

And 60 x 20 (or maybe 60 x 10?) should fit fairly well in an answer.

Also, yeah, I'd suggest specifying that, say, a live cell is * and a dead cell is a space, unless you want people to choose, say, 1 and 0 instead.

Or at least require that be board be composed of printable characters. :)

6:37 PM

Why is nutki not making it 14 bytes instead of 15 :/

no clue

too proud ? :D

6:53 PM

@PeterTaylor I can't find it anywhere: has matrix multiplication really not been done yet?

:O

7:06 PM

likewise, I can't find matrix diagonalisation/solving an eigensystem

lets not convert this to university maths SE :P

lol... just looking for common problems that haven't been asked yet.

I was thinking about array-manipulation, and thought there might be some more interesting (but not too difficult) challenges if we step it up to matrices instead of 1D arrays

Peter Taylor

9:26 PM

@MartinBüttner I expect that everyone who considered it thought, "Nah, too trivial"

@PeterTaylor Not if you require O(n^k) for k < 3

Peter Taylor

9:42 PM

Ah, continuing the grand tradition of codegolf ignoring sane performance advice...

@PeterTaylor lol, are you referring to the fact that better-order complexity isn't usually faster than the naive vectorised implementation in this case?

well, I think the diagonalisation would be more interesting anyway

Peter Taylor

Not until you get into matrices in the thousands by thousands range.

T Abraham

10:01 PM

-3

Making a neural network Challenge As you can see from the title, you are supposed to make a neural network with the least possible characters. The images for the cat pictures are in this dataset: http://bit.ly/JgaTcL 5000 pictures will be used to train the neural network. Use ten more pictures ...