The Nineteenth Byte

they do

you just did it wrong, somehow

imagine that ;)

next time, don't do it wrong, and then it will work :|

that's a brilliant idea

1:46 AM

yes. from now on, don't be wrong, and be right instead. you're welcome :)

A lot of the popular problems here are NP-(hard/complete), and it's a matter of encoding the naive solution succinctly

I've noticed that in my short time here

and if that's your game, then go for it. There are other problems marked as King-of-the-hill

I've enjoyed some of the code challenges I've come across which have required minimizing some number of moves or another such statistic

in those, the byte-count doesn't matter, and you're just playing a game

well, that's different

minimizing the runtime and minimizing the code are separate goals

Yeah, sometimes I enjoy byte crunching, but I mostly code in C, which isn't ideal for such endeavours

1:51 AM

me too

I've been meaning to answer some code golf questions in 16 bit asm

you should filter the questions by "king-of-the-hill"

as I also enjoy that and have a little experience optimizing it for size

thanks for the tip

sure, but you will never beat golfscript or cjam in bytes with C

so I've noticed

@Doorknob Hello

Doorknob

1:53 AM

@Orby Hello!

but I mostly participate in KOTH things, where code size isn't an issue

yeah, I've also tended toward similar competitions

or questions that require such complexity that no sane person would code it in cjam or golfscript

i still see solutions in them, and i'm driven off

haha

anyway, that's nobody's intent

1:56 AM

no, of course not, but it's discouraging if you don't feel like taking the time to learn some golf code oriented esoteric language

true, but everyone who knows golfscript here also knows C (i presume)

your insertion sort idea for that question is an interesting one, I coded up a bubble sort but it didn' compete with the basic heuristics that were posted

yeah, I'd imagine C is probably known by most users here

so if you post an answer that doesn't win, a few people will probably notice anyway

yeah, I've managed to gather a little rep here and there

be right back

2:11 AM

@EricTressler I return

4:51 AM

I'm looking to learn a "golfing-oriented" language. CJam or GolfScript?

6:46 AM

hi

I need some technical help please

6:58 AM

I think I solved it...

AndoDaan

8:41 AM

@SohamChowdhury I would say Golfscript over CJam. But if you're feeling adventurous, you might want to look into Burlesque: fmnssun.github.io/Burlesque (it's author is making a push to make the language more accessible) or the J programming language.

9:47 AM

I'd like either @PeterTaylor's opinion since I see him being a general GS ninja everywhere and because he was talking to @MartinBüttner a few pages back about GS/CJam.

@SohamChowdhury Peter did recommend CJam in terms of golfing, as it's apparently even shorter in general

@Sparr duct tape coding

@EricTressler well... as familiar as you get after reading GEB. why do you ask?

That's what I thought, too, from what I saw on the CJam wiki.

10:37 AM

@PhiNotPi I think standardising phinary numbers would make a good code golf. Would you mind if I wrote up a draft for it?

11:04 AM

Why not something about n-nary numbers, where n is the root of a quadratic whose coefficients are read from STDIN?

a* root

hello

@MartinBüttner they're parametrizable

and open questions abound

11:37 AM

hi

yo

what's up?

hoping someone will try codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/37620/…

and wondering if there is anything I can do to make that happen

how about you?

also replying to the comment at meta.stackexchange.com/questions/239331/…

i saw your post earlier

it seems hard

@EricTressler I am sure it is hard to get the optimal answer

@EricTressler but not so hard to get better than nothing, right?

edit distance is well-known, but the memory restriction is tough

11:45 AM

@EricTressler true but can't you just split the problem into substrings of a length you can cope with

find the minimum edit distance for each part of that size

i asked a similarly hard problem a few months ago

where it is no more than the number of mismatches use that instead

and add

I mean just as a starting strategy

I can't work out whether I should add simple ideas like that to the queston

or if that is generally a bad idea

@EricTressler what do you think?

i think here you do best with small problems with known answers

you mean known optimal answers?

but then there is no competition

i think I misunderstood

sometimes the public view isn't accurate

I lover wikipedia, but it isn't always great

11:55 AM

now you have really confused me :)

I find the resistance to meta.stackexchange.com/questions/239331/… interesting

we should fight for our right to log out :)

1:03 PM

@EricTressler so?

1:18 PM

wow, that's a lot of questions for a sunday

PPCG is bad for midterms.

PhiNotPi

1:43 PM

@MartinBüttner You can create a phinary challenge if you'd like.

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

kk, I'll get on it ;)

I've got two versions in mind: given integer n, output its standardised phinary representation. or: given a finite phinary number (potentially with negative digits) normalise it.

New Sandboxed Posts

2:08 PM

0

Standardise a Phinary Number code-golf arithmetic number-theory Background Most people on here should be familiar with a few integer base systems: decimal, binary, hexadecimal, octal. However, one can also use non-integer bases, like irrational numbers. Once such base uses the golden ratio φ =...

2:51 PM

@MartinBüttner so what

what were you implying by "they're parameterisable"?

did i say that

i juat woke up; no trick questions

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

3:09 PM

@EricTressler chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/17666349#17666349

@Dennis I think we've won :D

New Sandboxed Posts

0

Mixed Base Conversion code-golf arithmetic number-theory Background A generalisation of the usual positional systems allows you to use different numerical base for each digit. E.g. if we were alternating between decimal and binary system (starting with base 10 in the least significant digit), ...

Q: Multiply Golf with restricted operations

4:28 PM

hi

hi

hi

hi

...

!!!

4:49 PM

I need to stop procrastinating with Dennis's bowled CJam and focus on my Tetris controller...

professorfish

-2

You have already seen Multiply with restricted operations. This question is almost similar, just that its a code-golf first and then atomic-code-golf Operations allowed Addition x,y -> x+y Reciprocal x -> 1/x (not division x,y -> x/y) Negation x -> -x (not subtraction x,y -> x-y, though you ca...

vote to close ^^

(i think it's a duplicate)

I think it's impossible, so I'm not fussed whether it stays open or closed.

(I should qualify that: it depends on the representation. If the numbers are supplied as infinite lists of integers giving a continued fraction representation then it should be possible. But I'm pretty sure that's not the intention).

5:48 PM

^ You online now?

6:03 PM

@SohamChowdhury Me?

Yes. I wanted to ask you what "golfing-oriented" language you would recommend someone learn if they're starting now.

I'm torn between GolfScript and CJam. Burlesque didn't particularly attract me.

I recommended CJam to Martin the other day. I got the impression that you'd read that conversation.

Yes, I have.

Can you explan the GS/CJam quine to me? I mean the one that goes {".~"}.~ in GolfScript.

explain*

Hang on, I'll just test to make sure it does what I expect

It's not really a quine. {".~"} is a block. . makes a copy of it, and ~ evaluates it.

GS starts with the input from stdin on the stack in a string, so at the end of the execution the stack contains three items: the empty string from stdin, the unevalled block, and the result of evaluating the block (which in this case is the string ".~")

Then when GS reaches the end of execution it prints the contents of the stack. The strings are printed as their contents, and the block is printed literally. So the output is the concatenation of the empty string, the block {".~"} and the string .~

Sparr

why is that "not really a quine"?

6:16 PM

@Sparr it's a bit like saying that ABC is PHP quine, no?

I got it, thanks! :)

And @PeterTaylor is your avatar a graph of something in the complex plane? I seem to have seen it on Wikipedia, I think on the tetration page.

@SohamChowdhury codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/2543/8478 ;)

AndoDaan

purdy

shell only question permissible? bash, sh etc. that is

are shell only questions permissible, I mean

Sparr

@MartinBüttner is ABC a PHP quine? does PHP treat unrecognized strings in source as string literals? and print out a string literal that appears by itself?

6:20 PM

Single-language questions are permitted but unpopular.

@Sparr, if you don't include the <? then PHP echoes everything.

@PeterTaylor ok.. any ideas for how to pose a question on implementing quicksort in languages which are clearly completely unsuited to it (like bash) ? :)

Sparr

@PeterTaylor ahh, that's how html outside of <? blocks in .php files work?

ah bashguru.com/2011/01/quicksort-shell-script.html

@user2179021 Why is bash unsuited to quicksort? It's got arrays.

@Sparr Yes.

@PeterTaylor recursion seems tricky and I am not sure how to select a random number in bash

@PeterTaylor I am sure it is doable of course. It just seems a tricky programming exercise for the eccentric and hence suited to this place :)

Q: Criterion for marking posts are duplicates

6:25 PM

Recursion's not hard at all (I'm sure you can find some recursive bash if you look through my however many hundred answers on PPCG ;) and random numbers are $RANDOM

New Meta Posts

0

What are the duplicate marking criterion ? I asked this question which takes an idea from another question and makes it a code-golf challenge, which completely changes the scoring conditions, keeping some of the rules same. People are saying that both the question are exactly the same. Thus my...

discussion

6:41 PM

@PeterTaylor good point!

@PeterTaylor oh I found the problem.. it cannot pass arrays by reference

Why does it need to?

Keep the array in a global variable and just pass indices in the recursive calls

VisualMelon

8:22 PM

codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/37753/reorganize-by-arrows I can't decide if I hate myself, or if I should beg for the input to have uniform line lengths...