The Nineteenth Byte

12:07 AM

0

Q: Is this Game of Go configuration fully alive?

Background This challenge is about the Game of Go. Here are some rules and terminology relevant to this challenge: Game of Go is a two-player game, played over a square board of size 19x19. One of the players plays Black, and the other plays White. The game is turn-based, and each player makes ...

user

1:14 AM

Quick question: is it acceptable to output a sequence in reverse in infinite sequence challenges?

Redwolf Programs

How do you output something infinite...in reverse?

user

@RedwolfPrograms Sorry, I meant all elements up to n

I'm still working on reversing infinite sequences

@RedwolfPrograms This looks promising!

New Sandboxed Posts

2:20 AM

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Lists of power code-golf kolmogorov-complexity Generate the following list of lists. [[0], [1], [2, 4, 8, 6], [3, 9, 7, 1], [4, 6], [5], [6], [7, 9, 3, 1], [8, 4, 2, 6], [9, 1]] This is code-golf, so shortest answer (as measured in bytes) wins.

Lyxal

3:03 AM

Ah frick. The apl comment character (⍝) now looks sus to me

fricking amogus

Makonede

you're not alone

Lyxal

when the code golf is sus: 😳

3

Makonede

yep

also hey i've got a question

so

i know this one lenguage derivative

where the program is actually just the length of the corresponding lenguage program

so like a googol-byte long lenguage program would become a googol as the code in that language

now i know the name starts with a G

at least i think

but i dont remember the name

have you got any idea?

Lyxal

esolangs.org/wiki/Golunar

Makonede

ah right! thx :)

Lyxal

3:13 AM

It's apparently a unary derivative instead of lenguage

Makonede

oh

hm

ok then

that is the one i was looking for though thanks

Lyxal

this page might help

Makonede

i'll take a look

Bubbler

7:54 AM

For the lack of LotM activity... I guess it's partly due to everyone being busier in March?

New Main Posts

8:08 AM

0

Q: Why is my Oracle Linux Server release 7.8 VM Throwing "eth0: bad gso: type: 1" Messages

I have an Oracle 7.8 Linux server with terrible network performance. When I run dmesg, I see it is spamming several "eth0: bad gso: type: 1" messages per second. I tried disabling gso/tso on the interface, but it doesn't help.

networking

New Sandboxed Posts

8:45 AM

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Largest single-turn score in Match Land code-golf array-manipulation grid Background Match Land is a mobile game that falls into the Match-3 genre (think Bejeweled or Candy Crush Saga series): swap two orthogonally adjacent pieces to make a 3-in-a-row or longer. However, Match Land has an additio...

Alex bries

10:05 AM

so confusing that Language of the Month is 2020 edition

caird coinheringaahing

We could change it to "2020s edition"

Razetime

hmm when shall I submit a factor answer

Bubbler

@cairdcoinheringaahing Or just "season 2"

@Razetime Anytime :)

caird coinheringaahing

10:42 AM

> How it works
It's a built-in.

Best explanation I've seen on the site :P

Lyxal

Which answer?

caird coinheringaahing

21

A: Fluctuating ranges

05AB1E, 1 byte Ÿ Try it online! How it works It's a built-in.

user

1:33 PM

@Bubbler I can't get the 50 rep bounty now because I already answered in Factor last month :(

user

3:59 PM

CMQ: Which do you think is better, zero-indexing or one-indexing? (and not just because "that's how __ language has always been doing it")

rak1507

Zero, because 99% of the time mathematical calculations on the indices themselves work better

For example, indexing into something and wrapping around, with zero indexing it's simply modulo the length, but with 1 indexing it's a pain

user

I feel like there should be a variant of modulo with a lower bound built into all languages

rak1507

that doesn't make much mathematical sense

user

@rak1507 Doesn't have to make mathematical sense, as long as it's useful to programmers :P

rak1507

disagree

user

4:05 PM

@rak1507 Why does making mathematical sense matter?

rak1507

It just should

user

But if it's not going to be called modulo and wouldn't really be related to any actual mathematical operation, it won't really be confusing

rak1507

eh maybe

user202729

Mathematica actually have something like that I think?

user

This is what I meant (not sure if it works for negative numbers)

@user202729 Do you know how it works?

user202729

4:14 PM

Read its reference Mod.

user

Thanks

caird coinheringaahing

@user 1 indexing, cause that's how Jelly's always been doing it :P

Redwolf Programs

5:02 PM

I just hacked together my own compression algorithm with absolutely no experience in the field. It compresses a file of lowercase words separated by newlines by about 57%, is that good?

user

@cairdcoinheringaahing Humor me. What if you were designing Jelly? What would you choose?

rak1507

@RedwolfPrograms how does that compare to other compression algs?

Redwolf Programs

I'm trying gzip right now

user

@RedwolfPrograms That doesn't seem bad at all if you have no experience - it'll just get better. This Wikipedia article mentions 80% and 91%, though, so there may be better algorithms (although perhaps not for the format you're using)

Redwolf Programs

I get 70% with gzip

Anush

5:06 PM

consider a number in base b. Every "digit" is a number from 0 to b-1. Let's say we have the list of "digits" and we want to convert it into a number in base 10. What is a nice compact way of doing that?

Redwolf Programs

I'll try doubling the rounds. That should compress it more, but it's really slow.

user

@Anush In Scala? (0/:digits)(_*b+_)

New Sandboxed Posts

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Sequential Multiplication Magic Squares code-golf (Inspired by this question for a 5x5 and this question for a 4x4 magic square on the Puzzling SE sites.) For this challenge, a sequential multiplication magic square is an NxN square filled with numbers 1..N² where the product of any M-th row equa...

user

@Anush Set your accumulator to 0, then for every digit, multiply the accumulator by b and add that digit to it.

Converting from base 10 to another base is (imo) harder

rak1507

@Anush depending on the language there might be some clever way to do it too

Anush

5:09 PM

@rak1507 that was what I was hoping

rak1507

well what language

Anush

@user I guess going backwards?

user

@Anush What challenge are you working on?

Anush

how about python?

@user just for fun

user

@Anush Right, but you don't know the length of the list at first (unless you use a logarithm, which is annoying)

Anush

5:11 PM

let's say we know the length of the string. It is always of length 8

user

@Anush The resulting base b number always has 8 digits? Then it would be pretty easy, I guess

Anush

the input base b number always has 8 digits

the resulting base 10 number can have more or less

user

@Anush Oh sorry, I thought you were talking about decimal -> base b, not the other way around

Anush

sorry.. base b to decimal

user

If you're converting to decimal, you don't really need to know how many digits there are

Anush

5:14 PM

ok

user

Converting to decimal

caird coinheringaahing

@user Probably 1 indexing, I actually find it really useful in golfing

Anush

@user cool!

caird coinheringaahing

Although I'd add a single byte builtin for J’ cause too many challenges on the site demand 0 indexing

Anush

what about sum(d*b**i for i, d in enumerate(digits[::-1])) ?

did I win the golfing ??

Redwolf Programs

5:17 PM

Hmm, doubling the rounds didn't compress it much further at all

user

@Anush That works too!

Anush

@user woohoo! I never win golfing

user

Jan 22 at 15:26, by user

They fear you for the expert golfer you will be some day.

You may not beat Jelly answers, but I'm sure you can beat other Python answers

Anush

:)

user

Just finished decimal to base b. It's a lot more complicated, but I only know basic Python, so it can probably be made simpler

Anush

5:22 PM

@user cool!

does it give the same answer as mine?

user

@Anush Can I see yours?

Anush

sum(d*b**i for i, d in enumerate(digits[::-1]))

@user ^^

user

@Anush That one's for base b to decimal, right? The one I just linked was for doing it the other way around (which is why it's so much longer)

Anush

oh I see

sorry yes

caird coinheringaahing

6:43 PM

@user Using digits.append and return digits[::-1] is more Pythonic than digits.insert; Also, divmod is better than using % and // :) Try it online!

Because non-golf Python coders get irrationally angry if Python code isn't as "Pythonic" as possible :/

user

@cairdcoinheringaahing Oh cool, I didn't know Python had a divmod function. Is reversing the list later more efficient?

@cairdcoinheringaahing That's true for any language, I guess.

caird coinheringaahing

@user No idea about efficiency, but pretty much every python question on Code Review that uses .insert is told in no uncertain terms that it is bad

No idea why it's bad tho

user

Huh

I specifically looked up "python prepend" and got that :\

614

Q: What's the idiomatic syntax for prepending to a short python list?

list.append() is the obvious choice for adding to the end of a list. Here's a reasonable explanation for the missing list.prepend(). Assuming my list is short and performance concerns are negligible, is list.insert(0, x) or list[0:0] = [x] idiomatic?

python list prepend

caird coinheringaahing

@MattM. If you insert at the front of a list, python has to move all the other items one space forwards, lists can't "make space at the front". collections.deque (double ended queue) has support for "making space at the front" and is much faster in this case. — fejfo Mar 18 '20 at 14:49

user

@cairdcoinheringaahing Ah, that makes sense.

caird coinheringaahing

6:47 PM

Clearly the Pythonic thing is to use a module to supercede a builtin functionality :P

2

user

import base_conversion

caird coinheringaahing

Honestly, I'm not sure why all Python code golf answers aren't just import codegolf :P

> You don't usually want to repetitively prepend to a list in Python.

If it's short, and you're not doing it a lot... then ok.

From the third answer to ^ SO question

user

@cairdcoinheringaahing Perhaps "Python import" should be considered a different language :P

@cairdcoinheringaahing I'm the kind of person who clicks only on the first Google result and then ignores everything else :\

CMC: Write code that would be idiomatic for language X in language Y (e.g. Pythonic code in Java, C-like code in Haskell) (like a code-trolling question, although obviously I'm going to post this as an actual question on Main)

Adám

@user vtc as unclear.

caird coinheringaahing

I wonder what "idiomatic" Jelly would look like? Presumably it's the shortest possible version of the code?

user

6:57 PM

@Adám I'd make a sockpuppet and vote to reopen, then :P

@cairdcoinheringaahing And full of unintelligible characters :P

Redwolf Programs

Javascript in idiomatic english: that = window; (this || that).open();

Wait are there any languages with that as a keyword?

caird coinheringaahing

If so, the correct syntax should be that -> with the argument to the keyword after the ->

E.g. while (that -> integer != 5) { (that -> integer)++ }

user

@RedwolfPrograms What's that?

@cairdcoinheringaahing That's valid JS?!

Redwolf Programs

No, it's not

caird coinheringaahing

Are you sure?

JS is weird

Redwolf Programs

7:02 PM

Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected token '>' :p

caird coinheringaahing

> VM70:1 Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected token '>'

user

Maybe that --> integer might be

caird coinheringaahing

Ninja'd :/

Redwolf Programs

I know that-->integer is valid

But that --> integer isn't, I think

caird coinheringaahing

@user TBH that might be, and I don't really want to brick my browser by testing a while loop :P

Redwolf Programs

7:03 PM

No wait, it works

user

Yay!

Redwolf Programs

Interpreted as that-- > integer, of course, and those have to be variables

caird coinheringaahing

@user That's the "goes to" operator :P

user

Can't put a ++ after it, unfortunately

Redwolf Programs

I need to add this to my fake Javascript tutorial

user

7:04 PM

Slides to:

3355

A: What is the "-->" operator in C/C++?

Or for something completely different... x slides to 0. while (x --\ \ \ \ > 0) printf("%d ", x); Not so mathematical, but... every picture paints a thousand words...

caird coinheringaahing

@RedwolfPrograms I quite like the fake explanations for answers

Aim is to make it as wrong but as believable as possible :P

user

2063

Q: What does the ??!??! operator do in C?

I saw a line of C that looked like this: !ErrorHasOccured() ??!??! HandleError(); It compiled correctly and seems to run ok. It seems like it's checking if an error has occurred, and if it has, it handles it. But I'm not really sure what it's actually doing or how it's doing it. It does look l...

c operators trigraphs

Gotta love weird trigraphs

caird coinheringaahing

How it works

user

@cairdcoinheringaahing I could believe that

caird coinheringaahing

CMC: Find an answer of yours and "explain" it. The explanation should be believable, but the task its doing vs the explained task should be totally different, and the entire explanation should be completely false

user

7:13 PM

I wish there was a subdomain for these subjective kind of questions

caird coinheringaahing

There was

user

@cairdcoinheringaahing Haha

rak1507

@cairdcoinheringaahing so pick a random jelly answer and say it's doing something nonsensical? :)

user

@rak1507 That'd apply to most golfing languages :P

rak1507

yep

caird coinheringaahing

7:17 PM

@rak1507 Nah, pick a Python answer and say it's JS :P

rak1507

lol

caird coinheringaahing

I'll award a bounty to anyone who can convince me that a program in one mainstream language (Python/JS/Java/C/C++/C#/PHP/etc.) is actually in another language

Redwolf Programs

@cairdcoinheringaahing gist.github.com/RedwolfPrograms/…

user

@cairdcoinheringaahing Pick a Scala 3 answer and say it's Python

Redwolf Programs

I kind of broke the rules but it's funny

caird coinheringaahing

7:19 PM

@user Pick Scala and say is the beta release of the new Java version :P

rak1507

@cairdcoinheringaahing do polyglots count

caird coinheringaahing

@rak1507 No, it has to be a full on "lie" of an explanation

rak1507

:(

caird coinheringaahing

> Creates a string, for the cat to play with

What cat?

user

@cairdcoinheringaahing I've actually mistaken Scala code for Java because it was written so poorly :\

Redwolf Programs

7:21 PM

@cairdcoinheringaahing The cat plays with objects, which can be used to modify them. It's used to join the first and last name here, by turning the winking owl into a string for the cat to play with.

user

This answer looks like Python at first, but is actually in Dotty

caird coinheringaahing

Didn't know JS was so animal centric

Related main challenge - Locked and ~~loaded~~ closed

rak1507

'avoid intrinsic obfuscated language like APL' lol

2

caird coinheringaahing

Before 2014 this site was wild :P

user

@cairdcoinheringaahing My best attempt (and the original)

caird coinheringaahing

7:48 PM

@user Yeah, I 100% believe that :P

user

@cairdcoinheringaahing It could probably be obfuscated more, but I based it on another answer that I wrote recently, just because they look quite similar.

New Meta Posts

9:43 PM

0

Q: What assumptions can be made about the environment in Scratch?

It seems to be undisputed precedent for Scratch answers that only the code is counted when determining the bytes used for an answer (although, how to come up with the amount of bytes that the code takes up is disputed, but I'm not getting into that here). However, a Scratch program is more than c...

discussion policy

Dingus

10:24 PM

@Bubbler Thanks to you (and the other generous donors) for putting up your hard-earned rep to reward the Best of 2020 winners. And thanks @cairdcoinheringaahing for the nomination!

caird coinheringaahing

10:43 PM

@Dingus No worries :) I had that answer saved for the Best Of since you first posted it :P

Lyxal

11:14 PM

@cairdcoinheringaahing I did that once with one of Neil's charcoal answers

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