The Nineteenth Byte

George Edison

00:58

@Juan: I fixed the UserScript.

Anyone else around here?

Bass5098

01:10

@George, the latest version is still at 0.16, correct?

George Edison

Yes.

I fixed the comment bug, though.

Bass5098

Ahh, good :-)

George Edison

0

A: UserScript to fix the code-size argument once-and-for-all!

Questions to consider: Here are some things to be considered and discussed as this little script grows in functionality. What languages do we want to skip? Someone on the chat mentioned that there are some languages (like HQ9+) that should be skipped and not counted when determining the smalle...

Bass5098

It was tiring having to disable the script in Chrome just to make a comment

George Edison

@Bass: Sorry :( It was my fault.

It seems like the version of jQuery the script uses conflicts with the one on the site.

...so now the script just uses its own version internally so that it doesn't conflict.

Bass5098

01:12

Interesting, would have never expected a conflict in versions to cause that

George Edison

Well, the site itself inserts some special functions into the jQuery object itself.

...then when my version gets loaded, it's missing those custom functions.

Bass5098

Ahh

That makes sense actually

George Edison

Any ideas for improvements?

I want this to be a useful script that does as much as it can to make the site better.

Bass5098

Remove one character off the ending count, as it is always off by one

Even for the HQ9+ solutions with just one, it shows two

George Edison

I think it's a trailing newline that's doing that.

I can easily correct that.

Bass5098

01:19

Just checked the HQ9+ answer, the website does automatically add a trailing newline.

Chris Jester-Young

01:44

@Juan: What advantages does the Perl GS interpreter have over the reference implementation? Curious.

@Juan: I ask because, well, I'm planning to write my own GS interpreter, which will focus on speed.

My initial plan is to write it for Racket, because Racket has an awesome JIT compiler (or so I'm told).

gnibbler

01:58

@chris: apparently the perl implementation makes it easier to debug. Not so useful if it gives different results though

Chris Jester-Young

@gnibbler I thought the reference implementation was easy enough to debug with, but *shrug*.

@gnibbler FWIW my alternative implementations are not going to be 100% compatible with the reference implementation either, but should not affect the majority of programs: 1. You can only use symbols as variables, not numbers or strings. 2. You can't use "#{foo}" to execute Ruby code (since the interpreter isn't written in Ruby!).

I want to implement an extension to allow variables bound inside a function to be scoped, but that may break existing legitimate code, so I'll think harder before doing it.

But were it to be implemented, doing native-code compilation of GolfScript code would be much easier.

gnibbler

the not being able to eval ruby code bugs me a little. it's a bit of a messy addon though anyway. I was going to use if for the decision tree, but i never wuite finished the answer

was not going to beat perl anyway :p

Chris Jester-Young

Yeah, you just gotta use the right tool for the job. :-)

gnibbler

I'd like gs to support something like generator expressions

Chris Jester-Young

What, like Python?

gnibbler

02:07

It was pretty close, I had all the logic done in about 80 chars iirc, but i thought multiplying the floats was going to be about 30 more

yeah, so i can write shortcircuiting loops etc.

Chris Jester-Young

Yeah.

gnibbler

i wish "while" wasn't such a big word too. makes while loops almost unusable

maybe {}% could be made lazy

that shouldn't break preexisting any programs, should it?

i guess it could if have sideeffects in the {}%

Chris Jester-Young

Hmmm....

You can use "do" instead of "while".

Chris Jester-Young

02:27

I dislike the definition of [ and ], from a compiler-implementer's point of view. It means that after seeing a ], you can never really be sure what the stack looks like.

Robert Harvey

02:50

Do you guys want Code Golf questions to be migrated here from SO, or do you want to wait until you get out of beta?

Chris Jester-Young

I don't think they should be migrated wholesale.

They can be migrated on a case-by-case basis.

@RobertHarvey: There is one post you can migrate straight away. I asked rchern to, but she's not around. :-)

1

Q: Code Golf: Robot Finds Kitten

The challenge The shortest code by character count to help Robot find kitten in the fewest steps possible. Golfers, this is a time of crisis - Kitten gone missing and it's Robot's job to find it! Robot needs to reach Kitten in the shortest path possible. However, in Robot's way, there are a lot...

Much thanks!

Robert Harvey

No problem! Looks like an interesting one.

Chris Jester-Young

:-D

Excellent, thanks for your help!

LiraNuna

04:22

:D?

Chris Jester-Young

@LiraNuna: o/

LiraNuna

\o

gnibbler

11:31

heya liranuna!

i added ascii-art tag to your question

Nemo157

11:43

Would anyone be interested in me explaining how my Befunge solutions work?

Similar to what Chris Jester-Young did for a couple of his golfscripts

marcog

15:37

@Nemo157 That would be great!

Nemo157

18:59

Ok, posted an explanation for codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/369/…

0

A: IPv4 Integer Conversion Function

Befunge - 2x11 = 22 characters So close, Befunge will win one day. >&+~1+#v_.@ ^*4*8*8< Explanation The biggest distinguishing feature of Befunge is that instead of being a linear set of instructions like most languages; it is a 2d grid of single character instructions, where contr...

Depending on how busy I am at work today I might get another couple done.

George Edison

21:08

Okay, everyone, I updated my script to add detection for HQ9+ entries.

I also fixed the off-by-one count problems.

Juan

@GeorgeEdison I have to say, your script rocks. It would be great if it became standard

George Edison

@Juan: Thank you.

I just want to make this site the best it can be.

Any ideas or advice for future improvements are welcome.

I'm currently thinking of expanding the summary at the top of each question...

...maybe to include the language and author of the current best entry.

Juan

maybe a quick link to it?

George Edison

Yeah, I'll add that too.

Juan

Ok, this is a bit of a crazier and more complex idea, sort answers by count

George Edison

21:14

@Juan: That's easy actually, thanks to the way the pages are laid out.

It might take a few days to find its way into the script though.

I'll see what I can do.

Nemo157

Maybe add that as one of the sorting links on the page

George Edison

By the way, are there any languages you can think of besides HQ9+ that need to be disqualified?

Juan

If you need a hand with it, I'll gadly help

Nemo157

Befunge I've been counting differently, basically the smallest bounding rectangle of characters instead of total characters

George Edison

Should there be a special case for that?

Nemo157

21:20

I'm not sure, I've only seen one other person using Befunge as it's not really the greatest golfing language.

George Edison

22:49

@Juan: Here we go:

Not there yet, but a start.

It's in version 0.18, which was just released.

Juan

Great! As soon as my script updates I'll check it out

How do you figure out the language?

Nemo157

Do you know if there's some way to force Chrome to update the script?

George Edison

@Nemo: Just click on the script link and it'll replace your current version.

@Juan: It looks through the answer for headings and compares them against a list of known languages.

It's not perfect, but it works pretty well.

Nabb

If anyone if starting out on golfscript, I just wrote a sort of 'worked example' with factorial (the golfing process, not the solution). It probably isn't going to see much (any?) use, but here it is anyway... codegolf.stackexchange.com/q/629

4

George Edison

@Nabb: Any reason for the spoiler text in the code blocks in your post?

Nabb

23:00

Figured that someone might not want to see all the code straightaway

George Edison

Oh, I get it.

Nabb

The content of that post could fit better somewhere else, it's a bit huge for that page :S

Bass5098

Maybe in a GolfScript tips page?

Nabb

It's more of a story than tips though -- although it could always be hacked to small individual tips :P

Bass5098

@George: The script shows the highest post when there is a tie, is it possible for it to show all languages that have the tie?

George Edison

23:13

@Bass: Yes, that's planned.

Bass5098

Would it be possible to show character counts for all code blocks without re-writing the script?

George Edison

What do you mean?

Bass5098

At the moment it only shows character counts for just the first block

Can you have it show them for all blocks, but only use the first for determining the shortest language?

@George: Another thing, the note above the question says X bytes while the note below the code block says X characters. Any reason for this difference?

George Edison

@Bass: Good catch.

As for all of the blocks, yes... that does sound like a good idea.

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