The Nineteenth Byte

Optimizer

3:07 PM

its already that

Dennis

3:24 PM

@Vioz- Strings are char arrays. ['a] and "a" both push the same thing. What are you trying to do?

Sp3000

@Vioz- .zfill(3) -> "%03d"% ?

Alex A.

3:42 PM

@Optimizer That would be rather underhanded of them, don't you think?

Vioz-

@Dennis I was trying to do the bf->unary challenge, just couldn't figure out how to iterate over a string

@Sp3000 bin returns a string, not an int, so that doesn't seem to work

aditsu

@Vioz- just like you iterate over any array

Sp3000

Oh right, bin... surely keeping track of the numbers as you go would be shorter though? Rather than converting to binary and back

Hmmm

Alex A.

Hmm is right.

Sp3000

4:00 PM

@Vioz- Ahaha I meant avoiding bin altogether, but okay

Vioz-

My brain is not in a state where I can think of avoiding bin :P

Sp3000

:P

Optimizer

4 more to go.

Sp3000

@Vioz- You should try oct for the second program. There's two things you need to be careful of though

Vioz-

4:18 PM

What should I be careful of exactly? :P The only thing I noticed is that if it's too long that an L is appended

Reto Koradi

I got a CJam question that sounds similar to the one from Vioz above, if anybody is up for it: I have a string on the stack, and want to unwrap it so that each character becomes a separate stack entry. The ~ does that for regular arrays, but it appears like it does not apply to strings. Found nothing below about 4 characters so far.

Sp3000

Yeah that and the leadng zero

Vioz-

I actually have to chop off the leading 01

Sp3000

Or that :P

@RetoKoradi I asked the same thing today and Dennis answered - try scrolling up?

Vioz-

I'm trying to figure out how to do this, since I can't just do [2:-1], and replace/ if c!="L" will kill the byte count

Sp3000

4:22 PM

if"L"!=c isn't too bad considering the gain from using oct I think

Sorry, "L">c

Vioz-

I guess, it gets me down to 64 for that

I think I could use oct to save some bytes in the first one too

Sp3000

Maybe :P

Dennis

@Vioz- Are you still working on a CJam solution? If not, I'll post mine.

Optimizer

for ?

Vioz-

@Dennis No, go ahead :)

And oct got me down to 62 bytes right away, I think I can toy with this more

Reto Koradi

4:25 PM

@Sp3000 Found it, thanks. Unfortunately that's not any shorter than what I already had.

Sp3000

Ah yeah, one downside to overloading I guess

trichoplax

This question has a reopen vote but needs a little more clarification. If anyone wants to look and see if I've missed anything that needs to be clarified in my comments that would be great.

1

Q: Insta-Name... Just Add Coder!

In the English language, a surefire way to make a pronounceable nonsense letter combination is to make it entirely out of consonant- vowel pairs, e. g., Wu ko pa ha, or, Me fa ro. The challenge is to code a program that will, with the user specifying the number of letters in the name, create a ra...

code-golf

Reto Koradi

The ~ operator actually gives an error for a string. Would be nice if it would just unwrap, like it does for other arrays.

trichoplax

Otherwise I'm worried about it being reopened too early

Reto Koradi

Well, I think it tries to interpret the string.

Sp3000

4:28 PM

Eval's more useful though

Reto Koradi

Yes, that functionality is certainly useful.

Vioz-

if only Python 2 could implicitly convert to strings, I'd have a 55 byte solution for the first program

aditsu

@RetoKoradi that's quite an unusual thing to do, but there is {}/

what did you have in 4 chars?

Sp3000

@Vioz- I have 53 by doing something like that :P (converting ints to strings)

aditsu

~ on strings does eval

Vioz-

4:31 PM

Gah!

Sp3000

Not posting though

Vioz-

Well now I need to figure out how to get 62+2 bytes down to 53

:P

Sp3000

Well... 53+2 by your scoring (where's the +2 bytes for quotes thing from anyway?)

Vioz-

Since the input needs to be enclosed in quotes, i.e. adding to the input based on the spec, I added bytes to it

Sp3000

Hmm I wonder if there's a meta on this sort of thing - I don't think I've seen anyone else do this so I'm curious

trichoplax

4:35 PM

How did B***nf**k get into HNQ uncensored??

Should the title be edited before we get the site into trouble?

10

Q: Brainfuck to Unary and Back

A language that is very useful in restricted source and other such challenges is Unary, a brainfuck derivative in which programs are written in with only one character. Your job is to write a program to convert programs from brainfuck to unary and a program to do the opposite, both programs in th...

code-golf brainfuck base-conversion compiler

Optimizer

and the tag too

but I guess, its okay since the mods are away :P

We can blame it on them being away :P

trichoplax

lol no that's more reason to look after things - or we won't be trusted on our own again...

Sp3000

Interesting question.

I thought they patched it after last time this happened

Optimizer

I guess their mods are away too

trichoplax

Does the tag show up anywhere outside this site? I've just edited the uc out of the title for now.

I've left the tag as it is (it's an existing tag with 34 questions)

Sp3000

4:42 PM

@Vioz- int(...,8) can work without the leading zero

Vioz-

Oh, cool!

Now to figure out how the hell 53 is possible.. :P

aditsu

@Vioz- for what?

Vioz-

For the BF -> Unary thing, @Sp3000 said he figured out how to do it in 53

aditsu

Dennis did it in 35

Vioz-

Well, specifically for the first half and in Python ;)

aditsu

4:45 PM

ah, python

Optimizer

Has anyone played beast quest in here ?

Sp3000

Hmm it'd have been cool if keeping the leading zero and doing just int() worked, but I can see why they only made it work for eval (which doesn't save)

Vioz-

I think I'm going to stop trying to improve, this is hurting my head too much :P

Reto Koradi

@aditsu I first used 1/~, which gives me each character on the stack, but as one-letter string. I only really needed a character for one of them, so I used c to convert that one from one-character string to character.

aditsu

@RetoKoradi why not get the character directly from the string? which one do you need?

Reto Koradi

4:55 PM

@aditsu The string has 5 characters. I need all of them. For the first 4, I don't care if they are single-character strings or characters. The 5th is actually a number, so I need to subtract '0 from it to get a numerical value.

aditsu

well, )~ can give you the number, not sure what you want to do with the other 4

Reto Koradi

yeah, I thought of that. the next step is that I want to replicate the 4th character by the number I get from the 5th. if I pop out just the number, I still have to separate the rest. and would have to shuffle things around on the stack because the number is now on top

{}/ does save one character compared to what I had

aditsu

I see

Reto Koradi

It's this thing here: codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/52717/32852. Not very competitive anyway, but I wanted to see how short I can make it while sticking with more or less my original idea.

aditsu

either way, you can use ~ to convert a numeric string or character to number

no need to convert to character and subtract '0

Reto Koradi

5:08 PM

the problem is that one of the values is 11, and I wanted to use only one character in the string for it, because all other corresponding values are below 10

so that one is a ; in the string, which is 11 if you subtract '0

Sp3000

You can eval B

aditsu

yes, use the B character :)

Sp3000

btw {}/ is neat :P just saying

aditsu

it's from golfscript :p

Reto Koradi

oh! I did not know that eval would evaluate B as a hex number. that will help

aditsu

5:10 PM

no, it evaluates B as a variable; default value is 11

Sp3000

It's more like ~ evals actual code

Reto Koradi

i see, yes, that makes sense. i had noticed that the default values of A-F match their hex value

Sp3000

It's called good language design :) (and it makes things easy to remember)

aditsu

thanks :)

Reto Koradi

yes. thanks for all the help. i have to get to work, will update the answer tonight. i should at least get close to 50 bytes. unfortunately you found a much better approach, @Sp3000 ;)

Sp3000

5:14 PM

Seriously though, it's one thing CJam has over Pyth :P

Ahaha no worries, I'm still learning too :)

Sparr

wow, no love for meta.codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/5489/4787

Dennis

5:29 PM

@Sparr Well, it is a rather strange idea. By the way, you can use non-ASCII characters in Python by adding, e.g., the line # -*- coding: latin-1 -*- after the shebang.

Sparr

5:40 PM

I think that wasn't valid in python 2.2 and earlier? I'm a bit fuzzy on the cutoff.

Dennis

No idea. I just know it works in my version. :P

Nathan Merrill

6:32 PM

I've wished for this feature several times

does anybody know of a way to find global javascript variables or functions that aren't built in

in chrome console

trichoplax

If I have an idea for a scoring method/challenge type, should I

A. Post it as an answer to an existing meta question

B. Post it as a new meta question

C. Just post a new challenge in the sandbox and see if people like it

Nathan Merrill

sandbox IMO

otherwise, A

if you don't have a challenge attached to the challenge type, then A

trichoplax

I have a challenge in the sandbox that I'd like to apply it to, but it isn't ready yet.

Dennis

7:03 PM

Man, that Australian flag was a pain to get right...

And I think the stars are still not properly golfed.

trichoplax

I went with A, and posted it as an answer on meta.

0

A: Fair size comparison across languages with different source alphabets

Keep the existing approach Encourage new challenge types / scoring methods for variety and balance I don't think a general approach to making language differences fair will work - different languages have different advantages that vary from question to question. However, having a variety of sco...

Someone needs to put a stop to the flag questions before things get out of hand and we have the Welsh or Brazillian flags.

Answers will be pages long...

Dennis

Brazilian should be fairly simple as long as the resolution is low enough. The Welsh...

trichoplax

Well even the Welsh is simple if you put the resolution low enough... :P

Dennis

7:18 PM

OK, clarifying. As long as ORDEM E PROGRESSO is small enough to be spelled out with actual letters, the Brazilian should be doable.

trichoplax

Ah - fair point

Sparr

all the flags go with my "we have too many ascii art challenges lately" observation

Vioz-

7:35 PM

I can see why the flag questions are popular to ask, at least. Fairly easy to just Google a flag and make an ASCII representation

Personally, I think they'd do better as popularity contests.

Dennis

They wouldn't stay open for long if they were pop contests.

Vioz-

As code-golfs they end up being fairly repetitive, at least with a pop contest there would people trying for a creative answer.

BrainSteel

Aren't most ascii art code-golfs fairly repetetive?

Dennis

@Vioz- I'm not sure I'm understanding what you're going for. Do you propose a kolmogorov-complexity question as a pop contest?

Vioz-

@Dennis I must be delirious from work, not sure what I was on about

Dennis

7:50 PM

@BrainSteel I've solved more than 20 ASCII art challenges using the same language and I'm still not bored. I've golfed 4 flags in the last week and each required a different approach to encode the pattern.

New Main Posts

0

Q: Balancing Words

Balancing Words This challenge was posted on the DailyProgrammer subreddit, and I figured it would be a great candidate for a code golf challenge. Determining if a letter balances is based on its distance from the point of balance, and the letter's value. The value of a letter can be determined ...

code-golf

aditsu

8:40 PM

optimal answer to every flag question: ⚐ (assuming the resolution is low enough)

5

Sparr

10:57 PM

@aditsu .

trichoplax

lol

Transcript for