The Nineteenth Byte

Truth Machine Catalog A truth machine (credits goes to dis guy for coming up with it) is a very simple program designed to demonstrate the I/O and control flow of a language. Here's what a truth machine does: Gets a number (either 0 or 1) from STDIN. If that number is 0, print out 0 and termin...

Thomas Kwa

TI-BASIC is crazy good with challenges that involve keypresses and not much else

example: codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/52547/minimal-nethack/…

Lembik

wow

Alex A.

@quartata Do you want the truth or a machine?

quartata

@AlexA. The truth, please.

Alex A.

9:10 PM

I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't let you do that.

Martin Büttner

@quartata Just in case you're thinking of posting it already, my main thought is currently this ;)

quartata

@MartinBüttner No I'm definitely not posting it yet

Especially since it is a catalog

Martin Büttner

Does no one else want to join in on the fun? ;)

quartata

But I figured since chat seemed active today I'd try and ask for opinions

Martin Büttner

makes sense

quartata

9:12 PM

@MartinBüttner I would but I think my interpreter doesn't meet the rules

It was such a good idea too

Martin Büttner

@quartata I meant the robbers, but I'm sorry to hear that

quartata

@MartinBüttner Oh I'm no good at robbing stuff. I can't really break windows

Martin Büttner

try a brick

quartata

@MartinBüttner I'm bad at finding stuff too especially bricks

Alex A.

hahahahahaha

mınxomaτ

9:14 PM

One should really be able to favorite answers. That's a feature I seriously miss.

Alex A.

feature-request

quartata

The interpreter was actually based on the golfing language I was writing. Instead of having lots of wheels though, it had just one that contained an instruction that popped everything off the stack and pushed it as an array

The idea was I'd design it so that the > (which shifts the wheel pointer over by 1) could go out of bounds and onto the stack

So you'd push your own wheel containing a string of C# code and then shift over to it

But I think that qualifies as "undefined behavior"

Alex A.

mınxomaτ

lol

Martin Büttner

199

Q: Mark answer as favorite/star

Possible Duplicate: Is there any way to favorite/bookmark an answer? This is migrated from a suggestion I made at UserVoice. Often times I am not interested in the question so much as I am the answer. Unfortunately, the only site option for bookmarking an optimal answer is to bookmark...

Alex A.

9:18 PM

@mınxomaτ Posted as an even less constructive comment on Martin's answer

... — sanchises 3 mins ago

quartata

Well now that I've spilled the beans about my interpreter I'm really not going to post it

So I hope it actually was undefined behavior

Alex A.

You spilled beans on your interpreter? Gross, clean that up.

quartata

@AlexA. Oops

mınxomaτ

@MartinBüttner Wow, that answer and comments from Jeff are not really that ... intelligent (in search for a better word).

quartata

Why does the sandbox have two downvotes

Alex A.

9:20 PM

I see you prefer vanilla to chocolate. I'm a chocolate man myself. — Jeff Atwood ♦ Sep 29 '11 at 0:13

What does that even mean

Anonymous

@AlexA. I think it means he was drunk?

Dennis

@mınxomaτ The word you're searching for is constructive.

quartata

carrot.bmp

Thomas Kwa

@quartata can you make sure my pixel answer still works?

mınxomaτ

"We believe existing in-browser bookmarking tools are sufficient for this case." makes no sense at all. It's about having all favorites in one place like (heavily upvoted) comments pointed out. I don't get it.

Alex A.

9:23 PM

That's not an unintelligent statement

It's not the answer people want to hear, but it's not unintelligent.

mınxomaτ

Well, let's say it is not very well though out.

Anonymous

I see you prefer vanilla to chocolate. I'm a chocolate man myself. — Jeff Atwood ♦ Sep 29 '11 at 0:13

quartata

@ThomasKwa One second

Anonymous

That is definitely unintelligent

Alex A.

@Mego That's not the comment I was talking about.

Anonymous

9:25 PM

@AlexA. Oh, I misread

Alex A.

It's also not unintelligent, it's just not constructive (at all).

Dennis

^

mınxomaτ

Also, what are feature-requests for if a large amount of actual users agree, but he just answers "so either come to terms with the decision, or find another site on the internet that's more to your liking.". That should have been the answer, not a comment.

Anonymous

Perhaps not unintelligent, but useless

mınxomaτ

@AlexA. I agree.

Anonymous

9:26 PM

Makes you wonder why he hit the submit button

Dennis

It's also unintelligible.

Anonymous

@Dennis better

Alex A.

@mınxomaτ He invented the site. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Anonymous

disappears

Alex A.

That was also 4 years ago.

The question and its answers were posted in 2011.

Attitudes may have changed since then. Also Jeff Atwood no longer works for Stack Exchange.

mınxomaτ

9:29 PM

@AlexA. Imho it is just not an appropriate way of responding to user feedback. If his comment were the answer and the answer was posted as a comment it would be better already ^^

Dennis

Bookmarking answers sounds like a useful feature, but I don't think I'd actually use it.

Alex A.

Same

Dennis

Although it would be nice to be able to bookmark my own answers, so I won't forget to add an explanation...

feersum

Not so related, but I find chat a good way to bookmark small code snippets.

Alex A.

Chrome bookmark folder! :P

feersum

9:32 PM

I once posted an expression that gets the current time in milliseconds for C++ and I've referred to it several times by searching chat.

Dennis

SE Chat: GitHub for the chatty

:P

quartata

9:48 PM

Dennis's joke killed chat

Glad I'm not the only one who does that

Thomas Kwa

Taking this into account, how should we deal with this answer? Downvote it?

Lembik

@quartata maybe I will have to pose a question that uses the mouse instead :)

Dennis

@quartata Hahahaha.

Rainbolt

My boss is talking to my coworker saying that he is about to lose some vacation time if he doesn't take it soon

Apparently he hasn't taken a day off in two years

Alex A.

Whoa

@ThomasKwa If you want

quartata

9:50 PM

Please don't recommend that everyone include an <h1> in their answer. It's bad style to have more than one of those per page. The code snippet handles the <h2> produced by ## equally well. — Peter Taylor 7 mins ago

I copied that straight from the primes challenge and there are still problems with it anyways

isaacg

@Zgarb That's awesome, I hadn't noticed.

quartata

Can't do anything right lmao

Lembik

Java has lost its crown as the worst golfing language! (for my challenge)

Thomas Kwa

@AlexA. Should we suggest golfing, if it doesn't make the answer identical to the shorter one?

Alex A.

It already is golfed. Perhaps not optimally but it is golfed.

Lembik

9:52 PM

@PeterTaylor Could you explain your latest edit to my question please?

Rainbolt

Awww. I was excited for a few seconds when I read "For Your Awareness & Planning: The Gathering Annual Mtg in Room Whatever Nov 2/3"

I thought we were playing Magic the Gathering :(

Alex A.

Hah

quartata

@Rainbolt Greetings fellow MtG player

New Main Posts

1

Q: Invalid, but secretly valid

Write a non-empty program, which has to look like code in language A, but not compile in that language. However, it should be able to compile in language B, and the code seems invalid in that language at first sight. The code should form a complete program The code should contain at least 1 c...

code-challenge popularity-contest

quartata

@NewMainPosts Isn't this a dupe of something

Also it's tagged with both code-challenge and pop-con what

Dennis

9:54 PM

The Programming Language Quiz? :P

Alex A.

@quartata Not anymore

quartata

@AlexA. Fastest editor in the west

Rainbolt

@quartata Greetings

You know we have an MTG stack exchange?

Lembik

any suggestions for a good interactive graphical challenge?

quartata

We do? Wow that's cool

Rainbolt

9:56 PM

They call it Board and Card Games, but it's really just Magic, Catan, Cheating at Munchkin and Monopoly House Rules

quartata

@Rainbolt Ah I see

Hmm I might check it out

I like all sorts of card games

VoteToClose

0

A: Make an error quine!

Vitsy ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException 'rd3*l\OaON Exception in thread "main" java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException: -1 at java.util.ArrayList.elementData(ArrayList.java:418) at java.util.ArrayList.get(ArrayList.java:431) at com.VTC.vitsy.Vitsy.opHandle(Vitsy.java:234) at com.V...

quartata

0

Q: A "cheating" quine

Long-time lurker, first-time poster. So here goes. In the wikipedia page for quine, it says that "a quine is considered to be 'cheating' if it looks at its own source code." Your task is to make one of these "cheating quines" that read their own source code. This is a golf, so the shortest code...

quine

VoteToClose

My language is surprisingly useful for this. ^^

Alex A.

I am itching to destroy that newest popcon challenge.

Rainbolt

9:57 PM

Create an evil quine!

VoteToClose

@PeterTaylor > tl;dr: boring boring boring.

What?

Oh. You saw it. Never mind. :D

quartata

0

A: A "cheating" quine

Bash, 6 bytes cat $0 Basically.

Rainbolt

Oh, those actually just got posted

What the heck is going on

quartata

did I do the cheaty quine right mummy

Rainbolt

Are NewMainPosts and NewSandboxPosts broken or are you guys just super impatient?

quartata

9:59 PM

@Rainbolt We are super impatient yes

hey look an upvote

guess I did the cheaty quine right

very difficult

VoteToClose

@quartata That would be me.

quartata

I wonder if it could possibly get any shorter than that

Like in any language other than HQ9+

Thomas Kwa

maybe hq9++

VoteToClose

Does HQ9+ read the file or just print the source?

isaacg

It's 6 bytes in Pyth

quartata

10:01 PM

@VoteToClose Prints the source

@isaacg It is? oh noes

isaacg

If you're allowed to specify the name

quartata

Oh well I'll still "win" since I got the first post

It is something of a hollow victory though

isaacg

If you can't specify the name its much, much longer

quartata

oh noe a down vote

New Main Posts

0

Q: A "cheating" quine

Long-time lurker, first-time poster. So here goes. In the wikipedia page for quine, it says that "a quine is considered to be 'cheating' if it looks at its own source code." Your task is to make one of these "cheating quines" that read their own source code. This is a golf, so the shortest code...

code-golf quine

quartata

10:02 PM

what did i do wrong mummy

Alex A.

Would anyone agree that the newest "popcon" is a duplicate of PLQ?

Peter Taylor

@Lembik An HTML document should only have one <h1> tag. There's a boilerplate which is being copy-pasted which instructs people to add an <h1> to every answer. Since I've now raised this issue in more than one comment on meta, I'm trying to tackle the problem at source.

Alex A.

@PeterTaylor IIRC most of the leaderboard snippets require h1.

Dennis

@PeterTaylor Wouldn't it be easier to post a feature request on Meta SE to make # create a <h2> tag?

Peter Taylor

@AlexA. The accompanying instructions say to use it, but the JavaScript works with any header tag.

Alex A.

10:06 PM

@Dennis Then SE markdown != markdown

@PeterTaylor Didn't realize

Peter Taylor

@Dennis That depends on what you mean by "easier". It would require less effort on my part, but would achieve precisely nothing.

quartata

I guess people don't like <10 byte solutions

Alex A.

Oh @Peter, you're a dupe identifying machine. Do you agree that the newest popcon is a dupe of PLQ? If it's not a dupe then it's definitely too broad.

Peter Taylor

Actually, correct "would" to "might". Handling the notifications I get for comments would take a lot of time.

quartata

Also what that pyth solution

Peter Taylor

10:07 PM

@AlexA. It's also definitely off-topic for lack of an objective spec.

VoteToClose

Definitely no newline, @quartata

quartata

@VoteToClose Yeah it doesn't I checked

Peter Taylor

So on balance, probably not a dupe of PLQ because that has an objective spec.

Dennis

@PeterTaylor Easier than re-educating tens of thousands of PPCG users, I mean. If # absolutely shouldn't be used in question or answer bodies, it makes no sense to have it.

Alex A.

@Dennis That might be an issue for SE though considering that they can't just use markdown wholesale, they have to make an exception somewhere for # -> h2 instead of the regular # -> h1.

quartata

10:09 PM

Dammit I still got outgolfed by Pyth why

Alex A.

@PeterTaylor Cool, thanks.

@quartata Because Pyth exists.

quartata

Hey I just figured something out

VoteToClose

Is running a program with another language inside of it viable?

As an answer.

Alex A.

Then what language do you claim it is?

Peter Taylor

@Dennis I don't think it's necessary to reeducate tens of thousands of users. There are only about 12 questions which need editing and then people will hopefully copy-paste corrected boilerplate.

VoteToClose

10:11 PM

Say I did a Runtime.exec with Java that ran another language and called it Java and the other language. Would that be cheating?

Alex A.

That would be... confusing.

quartata

@VoteToClose What is this for?

I've kind of done that before with bash/sed

mınxomaτ

For the next 8,5 days, every single "Joy of Painting" episode is streamed here: twitch.tv/bobross . Happy little trees for everyone.

VoteToClose

Cheating Quine. I was going to use Java and cat $0. c:

quartata

@VoteToClose I don't think it would work

Peter Taylor

10:12 PM

@AlexA. Post-processing. They probably do some of that anyway to strip out tags they've chosen not to support. In a previous job in which I wrote some basic forum software, I used MD for the post formatting and shifted header tags by two places as part of the post-MD HTML tidying.

quartata

I mean the actual code

VoteToClose

Well, not cat $0, I'd do cat A.java. Whoops. :P

Calvin's Hobbies

@PeterTaylor I don't understand. You're trying to remove all # headings from questions and answers?

Alex A.

@PeterTaylor Ah, okay. Though I'm sure if you did request on Meta.SE, there would be a lot of angry users who want h1 even if they've never used it.

@Calvin'sHobbies No, he wants us all to use h2 instead of h1. So ## instead of #.

Peter Taylor

@Calvin'sHobbies No. See e.g. this diff

Calvin's Hobbies

10:16 PM

@AlexA. Making # completely unused?

Alex A.

@PeterTaylor You used American English in your revision note :O

@Calvin'sHobbies Yeah

Calvin's Hobbies

Good luck convincing all of PPCG (let alone SE) to never use the # header again

4

Alex A.

^

Calvin's Hobbies

Like Dennis said, why have it and not use it? Maybe <h1> shouldn't occur more than once but that's not an issue normal SE users should have to worry about. That's a backend/markdown issue

quartata

@PeterTaylor is my catalog thing ok now

VoteToClose

10:19 PM

@quartata Found a better way to do it anyways. :P

quartata

No I mean the catalog snippet explanation not the actual challenge

Peter Taylor

@AlexA. Huh?

Alex A.

@PeterTaylor You said "practice," but IIRC the British spelling is "practise."

VoteToClose

0

A: A "cheating" quine

Java, 156 Bytes import java.nio.file.*;class A{public static void main(String[] a) throws Exception{System.out.print(new String(Files.readAllBytes(Paths.get("A.java"))));}} Grabs all the bytes of the file at once and outputs it to STDOUT. Pretty straightforward.

Yeah! Java!

quartata

Shorter in groovy

Alex A.

10:23 PM

> Don't encourage bad practice

Peter Taylor

@AlexA. No. In British English, practise is a verb and practice is a noun. I think that in American English both are spelt practise.

Alex A.

Nothing is spelled "practise" in American English.

Both the noun and verb forms are "practice" in AE.

Dennis

^

Alex A.

Didn't know about the noun/verb difference in BE though, that's interesting.

quartata

Lot shorter in fact

0

A: A "cheating" quine

Groovy, 24 + 1 bytes print new File('a').text Put in a file named "a".

Dennis

10:25 PM

> practice (standard for noun but incorrect for verb outside US; almost universal for both in American English)

Peter Taylor

I stand corrected on en-us usage.

Alex A.

I stand corrected on en-uk usage. :D

VoteToClose

@quartata =.=

quartata

he he

sorry to steal your thunder but I had to do it

Why did the Pyth answer get downvoted so much

Peter Taylor

May I also correct you on ISO-3166-1? en-uk would be English as spoken in Ukraine... :P

VoteToClose

10:26 PM

Meh. In my heart, I know that my answer is more correct. <3

@quartata I was thinking exactly the same thing.

quartata

People don't like Pyth I guess

Fixed

All the answers must be forever at 0

Except for mine I guess

VoteToClose

I upvoted - it's a concise language, get over it, amirite?

El'endia Starman

I think a cheating quine in Minkolang would actually be longer than a normal quine... :P

Alex A.

@PeterTaylor You can correct me whenever you'd like. :P

VoteToClose

@El'endiaStarman Can't do it in Vitsy. XD

Dennis

10:28 PM

@quartata Maybe it's because it hardcodes the file name.

El'endia Starman

@VoteToClose Don't have a read-char-at-this-location command yet?

quartata

@El'endiaStarman Cheaters never prosper I suppose

@Dennis Huh. That wasn't mentioned as a rule really though

VoteToClose

@El'endiaStarman Read the file, not the source code by location.

I'm pretty sure it needs some form of file input stream.

El'endia Starman

Ah, then Minkolang wouldn't be able to do that.

Alex A.

@quartata I think it's the trailing newline issue

quartata

10:30 PM

@AlexA. Why is that an issue?

Oh I see

Alex A.

@isaacg IMHO That's not a quine, since it is not the source code. — mınxomaτ 24 mins ago

quartata

Ah OK

Wow this is the first time in a while I've actually gotten upvotes on an answer

Alex A.

Also please use code blocks for your code. That's what they're for. :P

quartata

@AlexA. Sorry

So.. wait

Rainbolt

Finally got the creative spark and sandboxed my first completely thought out challenge in like five months

quartata

10:32 PM

If the Pyth answer is invalid because of the newline stuff...

DOES THAT MAKE ME A WINNER

El'endia Starman

Hold your horses...

CJam hasn't answered yet... :P

/me personifies a language because it's easier to say :P

quartata

@El'endiaStarman I actually doubt it could do it in 6 bytes

VoteToClose

20 hours ago, by quartata

I'm an idiot

3

quartata

args is two right there

@VoteToClose 20 stars whoa

mınxomaτ

I agree with @feersum though, that requiring a specific file name makes this challenge way to trivial.

quartata

10:33 PM

Needs one more to overtake the most starred message in chat

Holy smokes people like my answers this is a first

I feel loved

New Sandboxed Posts

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

The Traveling O The world is a five by five array of cells. It wraps on all sides. It can be visualized like... XXXXX XXXXX XXOXX XXXXX XXXXX You are an O. You love to travel the world, and you do so according to the following rules (let C be the current day): On prime days, you feel nos...

VoteToClose

500 Rep!

El'endia Starman

Yay!

Peter Taylor

@quartata Part of the reason that you haven't previously got many votes on answers might be that about 50% of your answers seem to be on a question with 8 pages of answers. Little wonder that only about 20% of answers to that question have more than 1 vote.

quartata

@PeterTaylor Ah the Mystery String Printer

GamrCorps

10:38 PM

In an hour and a half I will have my first silver badge!

quartata

I didn't really expect to get upvotes on that one anyways

No, the trend of no upvotes started way before that

1.1k rep

VoteToClose

Woah, it makes them simultaneous.

quartata

Perfect timing.

@VoteToClose How is it that you have 36k people reached with half my rep and I only have 8k people reached

Very confusing

Martin Büttner

@quartata He has an answer on Showcase your Language

El'endia Starman

15k people reached with more rep than either of you. :P

VoteToClose

10:41 PM

@quartata I post on popular questions.

Martin Büttner

(they have... I guess)

quartata

@MartinBüttner Huh

VoteToClose

@MartinBüttner When political correctness increases byte count. Even though it's technically wrong. Because 'they' is plural. See this for gender neutral pronouns.

quartata

How does that work anyways?

Martin Büttner

@VoteToClose I think it's fairly widely in use (and has been for a long time), and I think it's the perfect solution for gender-neutral language (and really dislike the fact that it doesn't work like this in German)

VoteToClose

10:47 PM

@MartinBüttner It is widely in use, but isn't technically correct. Nobody'll blink an eye at it on normal occasions, and probably not on essays or the like. It's just the technicality of it being plural when used as intended.

Alex A.

@El'endiaStarman 388k reached. B)

El'endia Starman

Well, you've been around a lot longer! :P

Alex A.

TMW I realize I it looks like I signed "Alen" on the back of my credit card.

Cursive sucks.

quartata

Oh man I might be on my way to getting the fabled "Nice Answer" badge

@AlexA. doublecarrot.jpg

Martin Büttner

I've reworked the cat sandbox post a bit and addressed some of the comments... heading off for tonight, but let me know if you've got any more concerns/feedback/whatever.

Alex A.

10:55 PM

no_more_carrots.exe --> finds all files containing "carrot" in the name and deletes them. Then wipes your harddrive entirely.

quartata

@AlexA. You can golf that down to just wipe your harddrive entirely if you don't care about the principle of the matter

Alex A.

Oh, I forgot to add: It prints "It's the principle of the matter. ಠ_ಠ" to STDOUT before it wipes the drive.

quartata

Note that #!cat in a file also works for a cheating quine. But not when the file is called with bash. — Luk Storms 9 mins ago

Is this valid?

feersum

I believe that's considered a "cat language" program.