The Nineteenth Byte

@TùxCräftîñg You may also want to try the SAAAAANDBOX!

.______.

Q: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

179

What is the Sandbox? This "Sandbox" is a place where Programming Puzzles & Code Golf (PPCG) users can get feedback on prospective challenges they wish to post to the main page. This is useful because writing a clear and fully specified challenge on the first try can be difficult. There is a much...

discussion featured sandbox

.________________________.

12:09 PM

> This is useful because writing a clear and fully specified challenge on the first try can be difficult.

But still, you got a good challenge without the Sandbox. Good job!

:D

question

say you had something like this

wait, let me just figure out code blocks

?

help with code blocks?

@DestructibleWatermelon backticks for inline, indent each line in the message with four spaces to make it a code block.

edited the question

you have 42 rep .___________.

what I meant was, if you have a height of 3 platform, a pit in between, a height of 8 platform, would you be able to get to the higher platform

?

12:14 PM

._.

can mario only jump one forward?

or two

user214599

.-.

user214599

.:_:.

user214599

Look! A spider!

//˚<>˚\\

( )/||)< (/˚o˚)/

12:17 PM

/===    ---
|

hi

1 upvote on one of my questions \o/

@Lembik hi

@TùxCräftîñg pro tip:

Pro tip for formatting test cases in true/false challenges (or classification challenges with few classes): group the test cases by output and separate the groups so you can avoid the from /to/really bits (which makes it easier for participants to process all test cases at once). — Martin Ender ♦ Feb 29 at 12:36

Seeing the amount of questions, I'm temporarily putting this on hold as unclear, until these things are sorted out. This is a fine challenge, but it might have benefitted from some time in the sandbox. :) – Martin Ender♦

._.

Yeah, your question was closed.

You must sort these things out.

12:21 PM

i have beaten my record of the question closed the more quickly \o/

@TùxCräftîñg, can I help you clarify your question?

@TùxCräftîñg There have been much quicker than that ;)

@trichoplax yup but i have beaten my own record

Ah I see :)

It's an interesting question - it just needs to have the ambiguities tidied up then it will be ready to go

Any feedback about this or should I post it?

12:30 PM

@Fatalize Any feedback about this: you should post it.

Anonymous

@Fatalize I like it

@Fatalize Does "nearest" mean 0.5 always rounds up?

@trichoplax >= 0.5 -> round to 1

@Fatalize I guess that's what most people will assume, but since you were flexible on which character to choose as the centre of an even string, I wondered whether that flexibility would extend to allowing 0.5 to round either way. Might be worth making it explicit.

I can't think of any "real" feedback, so +1

bye

12:34 PM

@trichoplax Thanks I'll make it explicit

"Normal Text" is too short for a title :(

"Distribute Normal Text"?

Nice to have the meaning be a surprise though...

"Normalized Text"?

"Make Normal Text"?

Normal sentences?

14/15 non white space chars ._.

12:36 PM

Don't spaces count towards the limit?

Yes I like normal sentences

@trichoplax If they do, I hit the 15 chars limit right.

Exactly 15 chars.

Posted, thanks for the feedback

@zʏᴀʙiɴ101 Nice

I pressed the wrong button...

New Main Posts

5

Q: Normal sentences

Write a program or function which, given an input string and a standard deviation σ, outputs that string along the normal distribution curve with mean 0 and standard deviation σ. Normal distribution curve The y coordinate of each character c is: where σ is given as input, and where x is the ...

code-golf math string

I have a question, how did Jelly create it's own codepage? I'm assuming it's not easy..

12:43 PM

(removed)

@Midnightas Interpret byte value 0x00 as A, 0x01 as B, 0x02 as C, etc...

It is too late to edit this message

A codepage is just a standard for displaying those byte values as characters.

So when interpreting some code do I check the byte value or the character?

the buy button have diseapeared .___. gaming.logitech.com/fr-fr/product/…

12:46 PM

@Midnightas A character is a byte value.

(Well... in multibyte encodings, it can be several, but...)

So to create a codepage all you have to do is just make a 2d map?

yes

aha

alright, thanks!

Dennis also implemented a UTF-8 to Jelly converter for ease of use.

Anonymous

Yep, that's what I did with Seriously to use the real CP437 code page (and not Python's bastardized version that has ASCII control codes instead of dingbats)

12:48 PM

(and if you make a custom code page please choose meaningful characters unlike a lot of languages…)

Okay, but I didn't understand one thing, when interpreting some code, I have to check the character, right?

well yes

Anonymous

Usually what you will do is convert the character to a code point and then use that code point to index into a function table

@Midnightas create a routine to translate from your codepage to unicode, and then use unicode characters in your interpreter/compiler

Anonymous

For example, in Seriously, the main interpreter loop looks something like this (Python):

Anonymous

12:50 PM

for c in code:
  if c in special_processing_characters:
    # do special processing
  else:
    function_table[ord_cp437(c)]()

Alright, thanks guys! And I'll try to put in meaningful characters!

unlike Seriously

:p

ü to set a variable is logic no ? ._.

Wait, is it because of the codepage that Jelly (and Seriously) uses less bytes than it would in UTF-8?

@Midnightas it's why jelly and seriously use a codepage .__.

1:00 PM

Oh, .-.

because many code-golf challenges count bytes

not characters

Anonymous

@Fatalize Hey, I'm working on that :P I just need to come up with a set of meaningful character graphics for the various commands.

you should

What if I already released a language and wanted to later add a codepage?

because all those box creation characters are pretty stupid :p

Anonymous

1:02 PM

@Midnightas That's totally fine. Just create an interpreter that understands that code page.

hooray

@Midnightas just add a codepage->unicode translater with a option to enable it

Anonymous

@Fatalize 10000% agree, but a custom code page is pretty far down the priorities list

or the trick is to create a special font with proper graphics

How would a codepage to unicode work?

1:04 PM

example: interpret 0x00 as A, 0x01 as B, etc... for each byte in a string

eg: 00 01 02 03 02 01 00 (hexdump) = ABCDCBA

okay, thank you all

hmm... :)

fun fact: in n++ combining characters are like normal characters but rtl

Anonymous

@TùxCräftîñg Please don't spam combining characters

There is the chat Sandbox for that.

And don't glare at me with ._.

1:12 PM

@Mego Valid point, but don't flag that. Flags are for promotional and offensive/abusive content only.

I would consider it abusive

Yeah, what Doorknob said, just ping whichever mod you fancy

Anonymous

I agree with Fatalize - sending a bunch of combining characters that overlap the next 10 messages is abusive

Anonymous

sorted(set(y(a,s)))[::-1] - there's gotta be a better way to do that

Abusive as in "personal attacks towards another user" abusive, not "annoying."

1:14 PM

> Abusive: extremely offensive and insulting.

Anonymous

I find it extremely offensive when my messages are obscured by combining characters :P

Anonymous

To be fair though, it is offensive - obscuring someone else's messages is like saying "nobody should see what you are saying"

I thought of abusive as in "an abuse of a chat feature"

It may be offensive to you, but chances are the person on the other side of the flag validating it will probably find it annoying and decline the flag

otherwise I don't see the point of adding abusive to offensive

1:16 PM

@Mego Er yeah, that's a stretch

@Fatalize Well... ideally, there would be a way to flag that kind of message, but the current system is less than perfect (notifying every single 10k user and moderator and a 30 minute suspension is unnecessary for that sort of thing)

Anonymous

@Fatalize Same

Anonymous

It's abusing Unicode combining characters to obscure other messages and be annoying

@Doorknob There is a way: you look at the user list, and then you play moderator ~~bingo~~ pingo

Anonymous

I think most reasonable people would consider a flag on a message with a few hundred combining characters to be valid

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Perhaps, but the chat flag system is not reasonable :D

Anonymous

1:22 PM

Well yeah, but the failures of the chat flag system are not my concern right now :P

Anonymous

It's been 6 months since I posted my reasonably popular opinion of the chat flag system's failings (along with many others voicing their opinions of the system on the same question) and nothing has happened. I really wish this wasn't the norm.

New Sandboxed Posts

0

Chameleon Challengecode-golfcolor Chameleon challenges are a bad thing, apparently. Too bad, chameleons are beautiful creatures. Time for a change! As we all know, many chameleons posses a remarkable ability to blend in with their surroundings by changing the color of their skin. Which is also...

1:42 PM

@Mego is this about problems in chat?

they are super rare aren't they?

although I found it interesting how pro swearing most people seem to be :)

swearing is just part of the language, you can't be pro or anti swearing

Anonymous

@Lembik Not super rare, but thankfully not extremely common either (now that the main source(s) of chat flags have settled down). On an average day I see about 2-3, which translates to around 5-10 per day (factoring in times when I'm not looking at chat or don't have a chat tab open).

I'm anti pronouns personally

shit I used I

@Mego oh that's much more than I expected!!

You just did it again twice

1:44 PM

you like only amateur nouns?

Anonymous

@Lembik There's a very bad joke there somewhere

@Mego I look forward to it :)

@Mego Don't see which one ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

can I raise a flag that no one has answered my challenge yet?

and that it is making me cry

:)

Poke doesn't deal with pronouns

or anything abstract

1:49 PM

@Poke Never dealing with anything abstract is a great new year's resolution

Anonymous

Only the Sith deal in absolutes

although I am worried that the new year is an abstract concept itself

Worry is abstract. Poke does not recognize it.

Recognition is abstract

Poke...

Gah!

@Poke mon

the good thing is that you will never know what abstract thought is

1:51 PM

@Lembik Nope.

@zʏᴀʙiɴ101 mon

Thought is abstract. Poke doesn't do thought.

Poke used "it" earlier...

Anonymous

Unsurprising fact: 3 out of the 5 trending subreddits for today are about Pokemon Go

@Lembik Flags are for exceptionally bad behaviour. If you want people to answer a question, use bounties.

@zʏᴀʙiɴ101 I did that.. the flag thing was just a joke

@Mego I don't play PkMn Go. Not in that life.

1:54 PM

I am now wondering if this will be my first bountied but unanswered challenge

Does anyone actually use semicolons as query parameter delimiters? or has that been deprecated for a long time?

Anonymous

@Poke In what context?

url query parameters

query strings?

Anonymous

As in a GET request?

2:00 PM

ye

example.org?x=1;y=2

you separate them by & not ;

you can

Anonymous

I didn't know that you could use semicolons - I thought it was only key1=value1&key2=value

let me see if i can find some documentation

Anonymous

That's probably a deprecated syntax

2:01 PM

"We recommend that HTTP server implementors, and in particular, CGI implementors support the use of ";" in place of "&" to save authors the trouble of escaping "&" characters in this manner"
https://www.w3.org/TR/html401/appendix/notes.html#h-B.2.2

A: Semicolon as URL query separator

4

I agree with Bob Aman. The W3C spec is designed to make it easier to use anchor hyperlinks with URLs that look like form GET requests (e.g., http://www.host.com/?x=1&y=2). In this context, the ampersand conflicts with the system for character entity references, which all start with an ampersand (...

Anonymous

How old is that doc?

Yeah I'm not planning on doing this

@Mego You can hear the meteors falling and squishing the dinosaurs in the background

saw some library code that parsed semicolon and ampersand the same way and was confused

Anonymous

2:05 PM

W3C makes a lot of silly suggestions in their standards

Anonymous

Web programming is just a huge mess in general

ietf.org/rfc/rfc2396.txt also notes that semicolon is reserved in query strings

3.4. Query Component

in The 2nd Monitor, 11 secs ago, by zʏᴀʙiɴ101

And now, I'm returning to TNBing. If you still notice me in that list, it's because I don't exit favorite rooms. ;)

@Mego programming in general is a huge mess to be fair

like why do we need so many languages? We should just accept PHP as our lord and savior

3

@Quill Because we need to fit everyone's experience and needs. ;P

cheddar> var stack = []
cheddar> stack.push(1)
 stack has no property push

Cheddar might as well have array manip tools.

cheddar> [].push(1)
 Array has no property push

Yup.

Anonymous

2:13 PM

@Quill Now that is flag worthy :P

Anonymous

PHP: Pretty Horrible Programming

People help people

Anonymous

Please Halt Production

PHP: Help Programming

PHP: Hypertext Processor

Recursive acronyms are kinda stupid

2:15 PM

@BusinessCat Hello

Hi there

I had a MtG creature scheduled for long ago.

@BusinessCat Is it finished?

Anonymous

The story behind mysql_real_escape_string in PHP is both hilarious and horrifying

Anonymous

The original function was mysql_escape_string, but it was broken. The reasonable thing to do would be to fix the function. So, instead, PHP kept the broken function and added an entirely new function called mysql_real_escape_string.

@zʏᴀʙiɴ101 Sorry I was quit busy and kinda forgot about it

What did you want again? A white creature card?

2:19 PM

@BusinessCat Yeah.

@Mego is there a particular reason they kept it, I mean, stupidity is fun and all, but there's usually reasoning behind those kinda decisions, no matter how idiotic they seem

What was broken about it?

@Quill My guess news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6919216