The Nineteenth Byte

Helka Homba

09:01

@DJMcMayhem fixed

Anonymous

Why on earth is it getting reopen votes?

Qwerp-Derp

CMC: Make a function that returns the shortest possible route of nodes, given three arguments: a list of paths, a starting node and an end node.

The starting node and end node will both be integers

Kritixi Lithos

@HelkaHomba Are leading/trailing newlines allowed?

Helka Homba

@KritixiLithos A trailing one is alright in input or output (since some print functions do this automatically) but there shouldn't be leading ones

Qwerp-Derp

The list of paths is a 2D array, which contains "paths" - arrays with 3 elements: a starting node, and ending node and the distance between the two, so something like [2 3 5] means the distance from node 2 to node 3 is 5

Fatalize

09:09

Is there a meta-post + consensus abouth whether a challenge which is a subset of a "multi-tasks" challenge is considered a dupe or not?

Qwerp-Derp

This is something I want to do but I have HW

Helka Homba

@Mego I'd guess because people's interest in answering it is greater than their interest in having pristinely consistent dupe-markers.

Anonymous

@HelkaHomba That's not how reopen votes are supposed to be used.

Anonymous

Reopen votes are for when a question was closed in error, or when the issue for which the question was closed has been fixed.

Kritixi Lithos

I got a Retina answer (my only Retina answer that doesn't just return matches). Since I can't answer on the post, I putting it here: Try it online!

Pavel

09:14

@Mego how would you trivialy modify ^ to fit your dupe target?

Kritixi Lithos

Golfed 3 bytes: Try it online!

Anonymous

@Pavel You're missing the point of that policy. It's not specific answers that matter, but answers in general.

Qwerp-Derp

Should I make a room based on lisp-likes? Because lisp-likes are cool :)

Pavel

Who would you discuss Lisp with?

Fatalize

6 mins ago, by Fatalize

Is there a meta-post + consensus abouth whether a challenge which is a subset of a "multi-tasks" challenge is considered a dupe or not?

Helka Homba

09:17

@Mego Well, if it helps, I was one of the reopen votes and don't intend to add an answer. But it's understandable that a simple new little challenge is more inviting that an old, harder challenge.

DJMcMayhem

@HelkaHomba :)

Qwerp-Derp

@Pavel Now that I thought about it a bit harder I realise that the chat would quickly grind to a halt with nothing new to talk about, so I might not make the room now, despite the fact that lisps are great.

Anonymous

@Fatalize Not really, because we shouldn't be having multi-tasks challenges. They're off-topic as per this. The closest is this, but it's still new.

Fatalize

When talking about multi-tasks challenges I also include this one

So the question boils down to: is Calvin's challenge a duplicate because it is a subset of something asked in another challenge?

Anonymous

@Fatalize IMO yes.

Anonymous

09:20

(which is obvious, given my hammer)

Fatalize

Sure, but there's no meta post about this though right?

I can't remember any

Helka Homba

@Fatalize I have a hunch that this would make many questions duplicates of more general ones

@Fatalize Not that I recall

Fatalize

@HelkaHomba This is why I'm asking, I'm not sure on which side I'm on

I think my stance is more that the challenge that Mego linked as duplicate should be closed as being a multi-tasks challenge

because although it asks only one code and one output, the operations are pretty decorrelated

Kritixi Lithos

In which case Helka's challenge should be reopened

Helka Homba

@Fatalize I don't think so. Set union/intersect/diff/etc. are all in the same family of tasks.

Anonymous

09:23

@Fatalize I agree, but I would prefer to also have definitive versions of the subtasks created as separate challenges so they can be used as dupe targets

Fatalize

What I mean is that that challenge is basically "implement those 4 operations and print the results". There's probably no shared code between the tasks asked

(Even if they are in the same family of things)

It's basically like asking "print a+b, a-b, a*b and a/b", sure it's the same family of tasks and some code might be shared but ultimately it probably boils down to doing each independently

Helka Homba

But there where does "evaluate math expressions such as (a+b)*c" fall into this issue?

Fatalize

it's fine because there's only one result which depends on both operations

the problem with "print a+b and a*b" is that although one program is asked, it's basically the same as writing a program for a+b, one for a*b and then putting both together (which is usually trivial)

Qwerp-Derp

09:43

The Tetris in GoL question seems pretty vague to me for some reason

wizzwizz4

@Qwerp-Derp It seems well-defined to me.

> Make a game of Tetris in GoL.
> Take I/O however you like, so long as the input is in the set X.

New Meta Posts

0

Q: Are single-program multi-task challenges considered to be the same as multi-part challenges?

We have a consensus here on multi-part challenges, and that they should only be allowed if there is a strong interaction between parts. Now there are challenges that ask for multiple tasks, but only ask for a single program. For example, this one asks to print the union, intersection, relative c...

discussion

wizzwizz4

1

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

I've Got The Key, I've Got The Secret A cryptography challenge in 2 parts. Part 1 Implement a pair of programs in any language (the two programs could be in different languages if you wanted) to encode and decode a string of plaintext. Input and Output The encoder must take the plaintext (an...

Before Cops and Robbers, there were multi-part challenges.

Fatalize

10:16

@Mego @HelkaHomba meta.codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/11565/…

As for the duplicate-ness, no I don't think they should act as dupe targets for the subtasks. If that is possible there's a good chance that the challenge in question does have to little code reuse.

Kritixi Lithos

10:41

Would this be a valid entry to the valentine heart graph challenge?

Anonymous

@KritixiLithos Whether or not languages that don't meet our definition of a programming language can be used in constant-output challenges has been debated, but I don't know if a consensus was ever reached

Jan Dvorak

@KritixiLithos Even if the font did use a 100-point path, I don't think it counts as a graph

Kritixi Lithos

@JanDvorak Ah okay

Fatalize

@Mego I think the problem here is more that the language prints a heart unicode symbol, rather than using one of the allowed plot equations

The questions is "does that symbol follow one of the equations?" and the answer is "most likely no"

Anonymous

Oh, I completely missed that part

New Meta Posts

10:48

0

Q: Header formatting edit

I every so often stumble upon an oldish challenge and find myself compelled to edit a lot of answers in order to make them follow the standard/new header formatting (## language name, bytes count). However as I have not 1000 rep yet, all my edits are going through the review queue and so i fear ...

discussion editing

Qwerp-Derp

reddit.com/r/ProgrammerCringe

Ductr Tape

TFW you can't comment for suggesting improvements yet :'(

New Main Posts

11:33

0

Q: How to replace a particular text filed in json file if that text field has multiple ocurrances using inbuilt unix tools

The json file looks like below. Further i have an array that contains key values and a flag that determines which amongst the follwing nodes to be changed. Assume flag = node2 array = {"user","jack","password","killbie"} So in the json file at node2 object the value corresponding to user should...

json sed

Nathan Merrill

11:52

@ATaco while this is technically true, human's can't solve the halting problem. We just look at the source code and make an estimation as to whether it halts. Nobody really can solve the halting program

Kritixi Lithos

12:10

Yes! I can finally access site-analytics! ... wait, that's it?

muddyfish

@KritixiLithos codegolf.stackexchange.com/site-analytics

Kritixi Lithos

I know, but I expected more analytics

muddyfish

@KritixiLithos codegolf.stackexchange.com/site-analytics/traffic-sources

@KritixiLithos congrats on 5k btw

Kritixi Lithos

"Referring sites" does that mean from what sites people come to codegolf.stackexchange.com?

muddyfish

@KritixiLithos I would assume so

Kritixi Lithos

12:15

@muddyfish :D

flawr

13

wizzwizz4

12:37

@flawr /bigfsymbolthingywhatsitcalledagain aspi^2r dn

Kritixi Lithos

flawr

@wizzwizz4 /int

Kritixi Lithos

*\int

wizzwizz4

@flawr I thought that casted to int... Oh, wait. Integrate... :-/

flawr

@KritixiLithos backslashes are for beginners

wizzwizz4

12:42

Code golf in all of the places.

Anonymous

@wizzwizz4 We're spreading

Anonymous

There's no escaping us

TuxCopter

13:20

ಠ_ಠ

muddyfish

@TuxCopter I saw that too

betseg

thats old

TuxCopter

Why is everyone confused about JS and Java

muddyfish

java.com/en/download/faq/java_javascript.xml is amazing

New Main Posts

-1

Q: Find the numbers and calculate output

Write the shortest code to calculate correct output. Input: {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6} - (array of integers / numbers) Output: 543162 - (string/text)

code-golf math

TuxCopter

13:27

@NewMainPosts what?

betseg

actually it could be a decent challenge

Newly Featured Questions

110

Q: "KNOT" or "NOT"?

Write a program that processes an ASCII art representation of a tangled string and decides whether or not it can be untangled into a simple loop. The tangle is represented using the characters - and | to represent horizontal and vertical segments, and + to represent corners. Places where the stri...

code-golf ascii-art decision-problem knot-theory

Business Cat

14:06

Hey how can put a backtick inside pre/code text (in a comment so I can't use <pre><code>)?

Anonymous

@BusinessCat Escape it with a backslash

Anonymous

Like this: `

Business Cat

Ahh thanks

AdmBorkBork

@BusinessCat You can also double-backtick-open and double-backtick-close

Nathan Merrill

wait, so 5 backticks in a row?

makes a single backtick?

`````

apparently not in chat

Business Cat

14:21

I think it doesn't work if the backticks are adjacent

`` ` `` should be one backtick

Oh I guess not

AdmBorkBork

I don't think it can parse if it's consisting of solely a backtick. Also, we have a chat sandbox.

muddyfish

14:44

Apparently hexadecimal dice are a thing

Downgoat

@muddyfish this will revolutionize programming in ASM :P

muddyfish

@Downgoat hopefully a better distribution than return 4 as well

New Main Posts

2

Q: Recursive string substitution

The task Write a program or function that given three strings A, B, C produces an output string where each instance of B in A has been recursively substituted with C. Recursively substituting means repeating a substitution where at each step all non-overlapping instances of B in A (chosen greedi...

code-golf string substitution

mınxomaτ

15:00

> JavaScript does not create applets or stand-alone applications

Heh, this page is very old.

And apparently "scripting languages" are not even "programming languages".

Downgoat

> Java code needs to be compiled while JavaScript code are all in text.

this was written in a simpler time...

quartata

@NathanMerrill revamped

I think that addresses pretty much everything that was brought up.

(cc @ais523 @feersum @MartinEnder)

Martin Ender

15:23

@quartata "byte count of submission for each submission"?

New Sandboxed Posts

1

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Predecessor-completed Ascii Cubes code-golf ascii-art A n = 1 Predecessor-completed Ascii Cube (PAC) looks like this: /////\ ///// \ \\\\\ / \\\\\/ The n = 2 PAC is a geometric shape such that combining it with its predecessor (the n = 1 PAC) completes a side length 2 cube: /////////\...

ais523

@quartata even after reading the transcript a bit, I'm not sure I understand what the ping's about

Martin Ender

@ais523 an update to the regex cnr sandbox post

ais523

ah right

Martin Ender

@quartata I feel like the scoring incentivises fairly boring cops. as a cop you'll want to generate long quasi-random binary strings. that doesn't take a lot of bytes to generate but will essentially require hardcoding large portions of the strings in the regex, neither of which sounds very fun.

ais523

15:33

wait, since when did the accepted answer bonus count towards Epic?

if it doesn't, I'm 5 rep off

Anonymous

@ais523 Always

Martin Ender

mortarboard etc. simply count whether you hit 200, not whether you rep cap

Fatalize

pretends to have known that while almost never getting 200 rep per day

ais523

@MartinEnder the rules keep changing, but last time I read them it was "200 reputation from question and answer upvotes only" IIRC

note that you can get Epic progress without ever hitting 200, if you get a mix of upvotes and downvotes

Martin Ender

maybe negative rep changes are ignored or something

it's been a while...

but it's definitely about 200 rep, not about the rep cap

ais523

15:37

the only real argument is about what rep sources count

agreed that the rep cap doesn't come into it nowadays

AdmBorkBork

@Fatalize I'm also kinda proud to have gotten ~14k rep and only rep-capped once (and that was on accident)

Fatalize

...on accident?

AdmBorkBork

I had almost made it to 10k without a gold badge

ais523

I rep cap by accident far more often than I rep cap intentionally

also gold badges are kind-of rare

I only have two, one for nice answer, one for nice question

AdmBorkBork

@Fatalize A quick off-the-cuff PowerShell answer right as I was leaving work that had like 40 upvotes by the time I came in the next day.

ais523

15:38

err, great, not nice

muddyfish

@AdmBorkBork My first contribution that got upvotes got me a gold badge

Fatalize

I rep-capped 6 times apparently, most likely because of this...

ais523

or whatever the gold one is

Martin Ender

yeah, "great"

muddyfish

it took forever to get another one

100 days actually

ais523

15:40

the great answer was nontrivial, but nowhere near the most interesting of my answers

Kritixi Lithos

@muddyfish My first challenge got me a gold badge

Matthew Roh

Why does repcap exist

ais523

and I think the reason it was so popular was a) it was tied for shortest answer, b) it had an utterly bizarre choice of platform that actually helped me to golf it

muddyfish

@MatthewRoh so Stack Exchange doesn't have to keep changing the design because of Jon Skeet

8

ais523

@MatthewRoh it's a misguided attempt to prevent people getting moderation tools before they understand how they work; it doesn't actually work, it's fairly common for people with moderation tools to have no idea how they or the site works

I know Jon Skeet's been complaining about the repcap on the basis that he repcaps every day purely on old answers, and thus has no incentive to submit new ones other than accepted-answer ticks and bounties

Matthew Roh

15:41

But people should have learnt throuh the way to the max rep, shouldnt they?

Anonymous

@ais523 Any and all rep sources count. So long as you end up gaining at least 200 rep during a UTC day, you get the progress on the badge.

Martin Ender

@ais523 that's probably actually a good thing

AdmBorkBork

@Fatalize It also got me Populist

ais523

@Mego positive sources only?

Fatalize

@AdmBorkBork That's a valuable one

Anonymous

15:42

@ais523 Nope, downvotes count too

ais523

hmm, I wonder if I should go around temporarily accepting answers scoring 10 when there's a 20-point answer on the question, in order to spread Populist badges around

Anonymous

So 20 answer upvotes + 1 answer downvote = no badge progress

ais523

@Mego rep lost from downvoting definitely doesn't, basically because otherwise people at 200 have a strong incentive not to downvote anyone

Anonymous

@ais523 That would not be the best of ideas

ais523

indeed

really nobody should be getting Populist because nobody should be accepting answers

Martin Ender

15:43

@Mego no

Anonymous

@ais523 If you're at 200 before UTC midnight, you're probably going to get enough upvotes to counteract any downvoting

AdmBorkBork

@muddyfish Wait, I'm not the language you're looking for was your first contribution to the site?

Martin Ender

> - All positive reputation activities, including up votes, accepted answers, bounties, and suggested edits count towards this badge except for association bonuses, which do not count. (source)
> - Down votes cast or received do not count towards this badge. (source)
> - Each "day" lasts from midnight UTC to immediately before midnight, UTC; days are not counted in local time

57

A: List of all badges with full descriptions

Participation Badges Return to Top Autobiographer bronze; awarded once Enter something in every field of your user profile Caucus bronze; awarded multiple times Visit an election page while an election is in progress You must have the minimum reputation required to be able to vote in ...

muddyfish

@AdmBorkBork it was the first one that got more than 1 upvote

Anonymous

Oh what? That's kinda disingenuous

muddyfish

15:44

@AdmBorkBork and the first one in about ~~6 months~~ a year

Martin Ender

@ais523 it actually needs 11/23

when it says "more than", they're being serious

Matthew Roh

1. Find a challenge where literally everyone has answered 2. Accept the least upvoted one 3. Profit. Now everyone has populist.

ais523

I thought that's an old rule that changed

Epic is a pain to find details about because it's been redefined so many times

@MatthewRoh Populist can only be given to the highest-upvoted answer

Matthew Roh

Huh

Nevermind then

Martin Ender

@ais523 I think the linked thread tends to be fairly up-to-date. Also I'm not aware of any changes to Epic in the past couple of years or so.

(same for populist)

ais523

15:47

most of my rep on Meta is for correcting obsolete statements about how Epic and friends work :-)

Martin Ender

haha

Anonymous

So food for thought: you could create a sockpuppet account and upvote 10 of your own answers. So long as the serial voting and sockpuppeting isn't caught by UTC midnight, you'd get badge progress. That doesn't seem good.

Matthew Roh

Everyone knows that the easiest gold badge you can get is fanatic

ais523

fanatic takes ages

Matthew Roh

100 days

muddyfish

15:48

Can someone please tell me how to ignore documentation inbox things

AdmBorkBork

I have three gold badges, none of them Fanatic

ais523

I'm pretty sure great answer is easiest, you just have to identify a question that's about to hit HNQ, FGITW a short answer to it, and give it an amusing explanation

muddyfish

Matthew Roh

Seems not much to me

ais523

the amusing explanation is really important

I mean, this is nontrivial, but you get plenty of chances at doing it

Martin Ender

15:49

alternatively, post a "meta-answer" on an HNQ challenge (by choosing a language that is thematically relevant to the challenge)

ais523

@Mego I think serial voting reversion has retroactive effects on badge progress

it's been mentioned that a retroactive unupvote can cancel progress on Epic

Matthew Roh

can you ping ppcg everyday with a batch on startup resulting in e-z fanatic?

ais523

@MartinEnder that'll get you a lot of upvotes, but 100 can be hard that way, as it's mostly PPCG regulars who'll like that

muddyfish

@MartinEnder that's how I got my gold code-golf badge, a populist badge and a great answer badge

ais523

for 100 upvotes you need to impress the HNQ crowd, really

on an answer, at least

AdmBorkBork

15:50

@MartinEnder Quick, someone go write a PowerShell challenge. ;-)

Anonymous

@ais523 My understanding is that once the votes have been made and UTC midnight passes, the badge progress is locked in. But I've been wrong about Mortarboard & Co once today, so I could be wrong again.

ais523

"add a language to a polyglot" is IIRC at 102, but that took over a month

Martin Ender

@ais523 I got two of my gold badges that way, but one of them took months to collect the last 20 or so upvotes. (and another one in that category is sitting at ~70)

Matthew Roh

@AdmBorkBork Lemme guess what badge you have, Do you have marshal?

AdmBorkBork

No, but close.

Matthew Roh

15:52

Copy editor?

muddyfish

@MatthewRoh No one on PPCG has marshal

ais523

also that has a clickbaity name

incidentally, I suspect the best way to get nice question is to post a popcon that is a) genuinely good, and b) easy to come up with a half-decent solution to

Martin Ender

wow, how am I still the only person who has Refiner? o_O

Anonymous

He has 3 out of the 4 gold badges that I have

ais523

Marshal is basically impossible here, we just don't have enough to review

Anonymous

15:53

@ais523 You're confusing Marshal with Steward

muddyfish

@ais523 "Raise 500 helpful flags "

Matthew Roh

btw is ur pic a powershell falling from outerspace?

Anonymous

Marshal is for validated flags

ais523

ah right

muddyfish

I got my badge for 80 last week

Anonymous

15:54

Steward could happen, but it would almost certainly be for the VLQ queue

Martin Ender

or first posts

Anonymous

Our short answers trigger the VLQ queue a lot

Martin Ender

which reminds me, I need to get reviewing again...

Anonymous

Queue's empty for me :/

ais523

it's clearly possible for a diamond moderator and a nonmoderator working together to get Marshal in a few minutes, but that would be almost certainly be considered an abuse

AdmBorkBork

15:54

@MatthewRoh It's a DownPowerShell because I'm not afraid to downvote. No, my badges are not related to editing.

Martin Ender

@Mego I meant in general... because they're empty so often, I keep forgetting to check.

Anonymous

I check roughly hourly

quartata

@MartinEnder Would removing the length of submission part help?

Anonymous

They're usually empty, or there's one task in all the queues

Matthew Roh

Whoever has illuminator is illuminati confirmed?

quartata

15:55

also fixed that typo

Martin Ender

@quartata the only way to blow up regex size reliably is still to avoid any kind of pattern by making the strings random

Anonymous

Last I checked, Peter was the closest to getting Marshal

ais523

actually I'm astonished that so many people have Socratic

muddyfish

@Mego it's first posts that would happen first

ais523

@MartinEnder that's the first exploit I thought of, but there may be better ones; the challenge is likely to turn into an exploit war but I think that'd be fun

Martin Ender

15:56

@MatthewRoh I got Refiner two years ago and I'm still only 25% of the way to Illuminator...

AdmBorkBork

Also I randomly picked up Announcer the other day. No idea how that happened.

Matthew Roh

The best way to get random numbers are forcing a human to do it

Anonymous

@muddyfish There are 1k more LQ reviews than FP reviews all-time

Martin Ender

@ais523 I'm not seeing any interesting exploits which beat that unfortunately

LliwTelracs

Humans are horrible random number generators

Matthew Roh

15:56

°-°

Martin Ender

I think what you'd need is a target size provided by the cop or something

so you'd want short (and therefore interesting) solutions to exist but they should be non-obvious

ais523

@MartinEnder oh well, I'm saving mine for the challenge :-D

muddyfish

@Mego Martin's got 824 first post ones though

Anonymous

Martin has a 200-review lead on FP over LQ, but the higher volume of LQ should balance it out

LliwTelracs

There have been studies done on random numbers picked by humans

ais523

15:57

in terms of badges, Tenacious amuses me a lot

nobody has it (for obvious reasons) and it's a silver

Anonymous

I'd imagine a large part of that lead came from the code trolling bump

ais523

I wonder if anyone even has badge progress

Matthew Roh

Is there badges I dont see ._.

Martin Ender

@AdmBorkBork announcer is the one you can get from SE-internal links. for the others you'd need to share it elsewhere

muddyfish

I have Announcer on meta, presumably for sharing sandbox posts

AdmBorkBork

15:58

@MartinEnder Right. But the link I supposedly got it for is for one of Helka's challenges from like a year and a half ago. And I don't know where I would have linked it from.

Anonymous

Apparently SEDE doesn't have "helpful flag count" as a column, though it's public knowledge

Martin Ender

hm I see. if it's on main, you'd find the thread in the related sidebar of helka's challenge. if it's on meta that would be tougher to find out.

ais523

@muddyfish I think you can click on a badge in your profile to find out what post you got it for

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