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3:17 AM
0
Q: Solve the case!

Twilight SparkleIntroduction You have a lot of projects, and you've all named them one way: two words. But, unfortunately for you, you sometimes accidentally switch those words around while typing. Thankfully, you've come up with an idea: you can simply just make a program that switches around the words at a key...

 
3:42 AM
0
Q: What words where?

Twilight SparkleIntroduction You have a lot of projects, and you've all named them one way: two words. But, unfortunately for you, you sometimes accidentally switch those words around while typing. Thankfully, you've come up with an idea: you can simply just make a program that switches around the words in that ...

 
 
2 hours later…
5:48 AM
2
Q: 8 out of 10 programmers like countdown

MahkoeThere is a gameshow in the UK called "Countdown", and a funny, if vulgar, parody called "8 out of 10 Cats does Countdown". One of the games in the show is called the "numbers game", and goes something like this: Two, three, four, five, or six "small numbers" are randomly selected. They will all ...

 
6:39 AM
Wow quiet here today
 
 
3 hours later…
9:25 AM
@Lyxal Weekends often are, people have better things to do :P
 
 
1 hour later…
10:41 AM
CMC: Write a function f(a, b) with the following properties: 1) f(a,b)=0 iff a=b 2) f(a,b)=-f(b,a) 3) given an integer a there exists an infinite number of distinct lists b_i such that f(a,b_1)>0, f(b_i, b_i+1)>0 (for 0<i<n) and f(b_n,a)>0
 
 
4 hours later…
2:31 PM
Nice question! I was thinking about f=b-a before realizing it made a cycle
 
3:09 PM
@Neil How about cos(a/4)-cos(b/4)? Is there any limitation on n?
APL, 9 bytes: -O(2○÷∘4)
 
Just did my 75th first post review!
 
@RedwolfPrograms Nice! Next stop, the Steward badge :P
 
Should only take me a few more years :p
 
3:28 PM
5
Q: Is it a lobster number?

IronEagleIntroduction A "lobster number", by my own designation, is a number that contains within itself all of its prime factors. The "lobster" description was inspired by the recent question "Speed of Lobsters". The basic idea is that each prime factor can be made by lobsters munching away digits of t...

 
3:41 PM
4
Q: Print a specific value in the infinite Walsh matrix

Joe Z.The Walsh matrix is an interesting fractal matrix with the property that every single value in a Walsh matrix has a value of either -1 or 1. Additionally, the size of a Walsh matrix is always a power of 2. Because each Walsh matrix is identical to the top-left quarter of the immediately higher-o...

 
3:56 PM
got a python answer so now I am happy... well only bash is better :)
 
4:09 PM
I've been having a badge race with myself between Deputy (80 flags) and Copy Editor (500 edits), and I think it's coming to an end: 79/80 vs 471/500
 
I'm still only halfway to the 80 edit one :p
 
Unless I can get in 29 edits before finding a flag-worthy post :P
@RedwolfPrograms I do a lot of editing :P
 
I'm 40/80 for Strunk & White and 39/80 for Deputy
I've approved more suggested edits than I've written
 
@RedwolfPrograms My money's on Deputy winning that. Flags are often easier to do than edits
@RedwolfPrograms How close are you to Proofreader (100 suggested edit reviews)?
 
46/100
I only started actively reviewing things a few months ago
 
4:13 PM
Interestingly, only 17 people have that badge, despite being bronze
 
That makes it the second rarest bronze badge you can possibly get anymore
 
After Synonymizer?
 
Yup. Also, my new rarest badge is Inquisitve.
Electorate is in second, followed by Convention
 
Funny that Tumbleweed was awarded because of questions 3/4 times
 
It'd be pretty hard to get that on a non-tips question
 
4:16 PM
@RedwolfPrograms Mine is Archaeologist, soon to be Copy Editor
 
Oh wow, that is rare
You were pretty close to getting Sheriff, too :p
 
Tag Editor is my rarest on Meta with 30
@RedwolfPrograms Close but no cigar :P
 
Same here
How's Curious in second place for me, lol
 
@RedwolfPrograms Oh hey, I'm on 41/80 for Strunk and White on Meta :P
 
Is Mortarboard even possible on Meta?
Weird, it is. Maybe if you get enough votes that you would get 200 reputation?
 
4:22 PM
I thought it was if you get it on Main you get it on Meta but 815 != 36
 
We've only got one uncontested category on Best of!
 
34
A: Should I really have been awarded mortarboard on a Per-site meta?

Jeff AtwoodJust redefine it as "you received a lot of upvotes in a single day". So I think it is correct in spirit.

Only ever got Meta Mortarboard once: data.stackexchange.com/meta.codegolf/query/1361662/…
Because of this and this posted on the same day with a combined score of +32
 
If there's no more feedback for Bot Factory KoTH (2.0), posting in an hour
 
 
2 hours later…
6:31 PM
 
6:43 PM
@user well, you have to have an infinite number of values, but your example suggests tan(b-a) as the simplest solution if reals are allowed
 
7:00 PM
@Neil Some scaling would be needed, but that's a really nice solution. Do you mean you intended to only have integers as the result, though?
 
7:30 PM
Bot Factory KoTH (2.0) is now posted!
 
@RedwolfPrograms Want some CVs on the first one?
 
I tried a minute ago and the new one didn't show up in the search thing
 
It needs to have a positive score
 
I almost just tried to VTC the new one lol
If I click "This does answer my question", will it immediately close it?
Oh nice, it did
 
@user yes my original solution had f ∈ ℤ × ℤ ↦ ℤ
 
7:43 PM
2
Q: Bot Factory KoTH (2.0)

Redwolf ProgramsIn this challenge, bots (consisting of JS functions) move around an infinite factory (playing field), collecting characters. These characters can be used to build worker bots, or dropped for other bots to pick up. This challenge is a modified redo of Bot Factory KoTH, which was broken by a mistak...

 
7:55 PM
@Neil Oh, I see. Well, a dirty hack to make mine work like that would be to just round away from zero :) I guess that's probably not what you intended, though.
I'm tempted to nominate [this Lenguage answer](https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/131882/95792) for "Most improved answer" so that I don't win by default. On the one hand, they didn't really turn 645529908926937253684695788965635909332404360034079 9394157991500940492270727190763049448735 1174269748937617561533841898064735499551 bytes into
2293382937520069758100171520285996319, but the original bf went from 40 bytes to 13 bytes, which is still extremely impressive.
 
8:50 PM
@user I don't see how that would work as you wouldn't be able to guarantee that f(a,b) is zero only when a equals b
wait, I misunderstood
I was thinking I'd said tan(a) - tan(b) for some reason
 
9:04 PM
@user 13/40 is pretty good. best I could find from my answers is 19/35: codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/211012/17602
 
@Neil Oops, I'm the one that misunderstood - I didn't see it was "iff" and not "if".
Actually, never mind, since a and b must be integers, and pi is rational, even though f(a, b) and f(a, b + pi) are the same, b + pi will always be irrational and won't work.
So would rounding away from zero work after all?
@Neil Unrelated question, but how did you find that answer? I'd like to do the same, but for all users on Code Golf. Do you have the link to your query?
 
@user A proper SEDE query might be difficult, as not everyone uses the <s> formatting when improving answers
 
@user I didn't use a query, I just looked at the first 5 pages of a code golf search for my recent answers
@user should do I think
 
9:27 PM
Morning again
 
Yeah
It was morning yesterday and now its morning rn
 
@RedwolfPrograms It happens everyday
 
^
 
This is news to me
 
9:30 PM
The more you know.
 
I thought we were just getting really lucky every morning
 
There's been mornings for the last few million years dream.
 
9:51 PM
heh, somebody randomly upvoted a five-year-old answer of mine, which allowed me to spot a trivial 1-byte golf
 
10:05 PM
link.
 
10:19 PM
@Neil Oh ok
 
10:44 PM
An old laptop of mine is charging from a flat battery right now. I can't wait to see my crappy first attempt at an esolang again
Because said laptop still has the code I used
 
Didn't you use Git?
 
@user How would that help?
 
It might have been on Github or Gitlab then
 
0
A: List of bounties with no deadline

EasyasPi50 rep for solving a challenge in an interpreter using an ACE exploit I've reached 1000 rep, so here's a small bounty for you RE/CTF enthusiasts for an answer I really want to see. CVE-2018-6849: Code execution results in code execution — TheZZAZZGlitch, "A friendly reminder: Lua scripts are arb...

 
@user not back in those days
This was before I did code golf and learnt good programming practices
3
 
10:51 PM
@Lyxal Ah, when you said "back in those days," I thought you meant something like "Back in the good old days, when we used our eidetic memories to track changes and resolved conflicts through arm-wrestling"
@Lyxal Wait, how did code golf teach you good programming practices? I've found my code's gotten consistently worse as a result of my participation here.
 
@user I'm not that old
@user well not so much code golf but the meta game of code golf: language creation
Looking at other people's golflangs and their interpreters
 
I just make any changes that could break something all at once and frantically hit Ctrl + Z if it does
2
 
I've learnt things from esolang creation I probably may not have otherwise known
Mostly in relation to parsing and tokenisation
 
Parsing is hard
 
Not once you have a decent parser
 
10:59 PM
Well, that's the problem
 
Breaking modern cryptography isn't hard once you break modern cryptography
2
 
I started on trying to make a semi-practical language about a year back, and I still haven't finished the parser
 
Well obviously parsing a stack based language is easier than parsing a practical language
 
True
 
But I feel I would know how to make a normal parser
It'd just be expanding the esolang parser to support variable length words
 
11:00 PM
Tell me, do you use regex? Is it completely hand-rolled for extra optimization?
 
Frick regex
I once read that using regex is a bad idea when writing a parser
 
Regex makes you think you can do cool stuff then an hour in you realize you can't
 
So I just go char by char
 
@RedwolfPrograms It took me about a month to realize that
 
@RedwolfPrograms recursive regex ftw
 
11:02 PM
I mean for an AoC challenge I had to auto-generate ten thousand regexes to match every number of surrounding parentheses possible because regex can't match those
 
How do you handle backtracking?
 
@user backtracking?
@RedwolfPrograms wow imagine not being able to use the cool features of PCRE
 
What I meant was "not backtracking". Not sure what it's actually called, maybe "cutting"?
 
Example?
 
Like if a match fails, and you don't want it go back and try something else
 
11:03 PM
Wait PCRE can handle matching brackets?
 
@Lyxal Gimme a second
 
Prolly
@user mind you my parser doesn't use regex
 
Neither does my new one
 
It helps to group strings as their own token first
That's what I've found
 
Okay, so the thing I was going to use it for was if you have a method call foo<bar>(baz, and something in baz is malformed, then you don't want it go back and try to parse it as maybe (foo < bar) > (baz...
Btw I know that syntax is ambiguous, it just felt better than Java's absurd this.<bar>foo(baz).
 
11:07 PM
That's why you'd want to make syntax unambiguous
Or make it so that the parser realises that a < b > c is a function call outside of the scope of a condition
 
Well, suppose you have a + b ..., and you know (a + b) is a thing, and if the rest fails, you don't want it go and match on subtraction, etc.
 
Or leave the ambiguity as an easter egg with a 1% chance of the other interpretation occuring
 
Uh...i don't think so
1% is too small, I'll make it 50
@Lyxal Probably a better idea, but I'm stubborn about my syntax
 
Do you think it'd be too confusing if I gave mathematical symbols uses in my esolang that are completely unrelated to their usual function?
Some of them look like nice visual representations of what the operator does (i.e., branch three ways or something), but are already used for some other purpose
 
I'd say you should make it as intuitive as possible, so more people can easily use it
 
11:12 PM
@RedwolfPrograms no it wouldn't
 
@RedwolfPrograms Not really. APL does this quite a bit.
 
There's a lot of Unicode symbols out there, hopefully you'll find some more
 
Ofc I can't say otherwise because I've done this myself
 
even basic mathematical symbols are easily overloaded in a learner's mind
 
@RedwolfPrograms mnemonic over accurate
That's what I live by
And that's what I did with vyxal
I mean, I stuck to actual representation where possible but I prefer symbolic over tradition
 
11:14 PM
@RedwolfPrograms Use exclusively letters with various accents, don’t even have to worry about it :ρ
 
sometimes / is division and ÷ is integer division, sometimes ÷ is division and / is reduce and : is integer division
 
I think I've mostly figured out the basics of my golfing language, so I can start adding operators now.
 
and then most practical languages use * for multiplication but a lot of golflangs use it for exponentiation
 
@UnrelatedString As does APL
 
and speaking of apl, j uses square brackets for what apl uses / for iirc which jelly just uses accented letters for
so don't worry about using symbols your own way
thought of square brackets because i'm going to use a right square bracket for one thing in perhaps and have no idea what i'll do with the left square bracket
 
11:23 PM
Square brackets are some of my favorite ASCII characters
Not counting half of the unprintable ones
 
@UnrelatedString May I suggest allowing them to execute arbitrary JavaScript/Python code?
 
@UnrelatedString left square bracket should do the inverse of right square bracket
@RedwolfPrograms is there a repo/gist/esolangs page we can have a look at?
 
Not at the moment, but I can put my rough plans in a Gist
Haven't decided on a name
Very rough planning document, don't expect it to be readable
 
11:39 PM
@RedwolfPrograms Unnamed and [Unnamed] sound like excellent esolang names.
 
Oh wait FizzBuzz will actually be 14 bytes
@Adám So would <all languages>
 
@RedwolfPrograms Why distinguish between Booleans and numbers?
 
So that booleans can have separate operations overloaded
 
And I presume you'll have a convert-Bool-to-num function?
 
@RedwolfPrograms one problem: where do you account for the output needing to be FizzBuzz?
There seems to be nothing there to indicate a combination of fizz and buzz
 
11:43 PM
The last line was kind of unclear but it means to join Fizz and Buzz if both conditions are true and thus both are run
 
what about printing to stdout?
 
Basically the quat. operator would return "Fizz" or "Buzz" normally, but if both had to return it'd put them in an array ["Fizz", "Buzz"]
Oh, it has to be \n joined :(
Make that fifteen bytes I guess
 
@Lyxal Surely implicit.
 
@RedwolfPrograms this guy would like to disagree with you, unless you're using ECMAScript regex: stackoverflow.com/a/47162099/182705
 
CMQ: What should string multiplication do?
I've asked before, and had interleaving as an answer, but I realised I already have a built-in for interleaving.
 
11:53 PM
Cartesian product
 
already got a built-in for that too
 
What tool would/do y'all use to plan out the codepage for a golfing language?
 
Alright, I'm stretching it a bit here, but if you're doing "foo" × "bar", then "bar" could be coerced to a list of chars, which could be coerced to a list of integers. So you get "foo" × [98, 97, 114]
And then just do normal string-by-integer multiplication
Not very useful, though
 
@Lyxal Apply capitalisation from one string to the other.
 
Maybe since × looks like what you'd use to cross something out, "banana" × "na" could be "ba" or "bana"?
 
11:58 PM
@Adám so for example "abc" * "DeF" = "AbC"?
 
@Lyxal Yes, exactly.
 
30
Q: "Multiply" two strings

caird coinheringaahing This was inspired by a function I recently added to my language Add++. Therefore I will submit an short answer in Add++ but I won't accept it if it wins (it wouldn't be fair) Don't you hate it when you can multiply numbers but not strings? So you should correct that, right? You are to write a...

 

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