@cairdcoinheringaahing Pip, 10 bytes:

`\D`Na?Raa

That kinda looks like it says "Dina? Raaa" :P

I was thinking it was something to do with DNA, but yeah, I could also see the backtick as an apostrophe

@DLosc 11 bytes in Pip Classic

@cairdcoinheringaahing Pip, 5 bytes: $+TBg

(6 bytes if it has to be a list rather than a string, but the output format is unambiguous either way)

The Community user now has it's own [Bot] label network wide btw :P

Well congratulations to it!

took a look at 5d chess and i am now scarred for life in at least three timelines

@AaronMiller None, aside from v/f for running it

@hyper-neutrino Do any of the timelines allow for time travel? Maybe you can go back and unsee it

Well, Ṡ seems fine

unfortunately changing the past creates new timelines but doesn't alter the existing past future

As long as you don't use it in a cheaty manner. And any of them could be fine if without the flag it'd still be an allowed input or output format.

The timeout ones are fine for running the code, although if you used them in a challenge involving timing I'd consider it cheating

I think of an interpreter not as one black box, but as three. One that takes input from the user or environment and turns it into data usable by the code, one that runs the code with input and output that's valid within the language, and one which takes that data and represents it as a string for interacting with the user

"Printing an array" makes no sense if you think of an interpreter as a single black box

"Outputting an array which is represented with space separated items" makes sense, but I'd call that an array, not a space separated string

So using that in a challenge that requires space separated strings would be cheating imo

@RedwolfPrograms I think the flags that extend the running limit are fine (haven't seen the list linked tho)

I don't think you could tbh

Basically I think they're perfectly fine if they aren't being used as part of the challenge itself (e.g., using a "timeout after 10s" flag with an infinitely looping program and calling it a program that takes 10s to terminate)

Ah, yeah, that's cheating

@AaronMiller Some of those are in a gray area for me, but I think my acceptable list is roughly jMmṀvcfaSOoKWṠṡJ5bBT. I'm not sure about R--what's the default behavior without it?

I'm sort of uncomfortable making a list of "good flags and bad flags" because it's entirely about how they're used imo

(I definitely think many of those flags fall in "makes it a different language" territory.)

Idk, I think in order to reach that point it needs to be significantly different

r is the only one I could maybe see being defensible on those grounds

Well, yes, "How different is different?" is a very subjective question as well, as any polyglot question writer knows.

You can't seriously argue that "vyxal, a complicated golfing languages with thousands of lines of code, becomes a totally distinct languages when you join the outputs with a newline"

I could probably seriously argue that... but I won't. The output-formatting flags are in a different category for me.

The only two situations I'd consider two combinations of flags to be different is: 1. It uses a different version of the interpreter (where that's an actual version, and not "y'know, I'll update to include j by default, then revert with the next update 10m later"), or 2. you have to put a lot of work in to port over code written without the flag

If using a flag gives you something which can pretty trivially be changed into not using that flag, or vice versa, it is almost certainly not different enough

And I don't think any of Vyxal's flags (aside from r, maybe) fit that description

I'd consider the output of Vyxal j to be an array, not a string joined by newlines. If you're outputting as an array, and just using j for nicer formatting, I'm 100% fine with it (but you should probably move it out of the header). But if the question specifically wants a string with newlines, I would consider j to be cheating.

Same with all of the other I/O flags

+1. imo flags are cheating when they explicitly solve a part of the challenge

my opinion on vyxal j is just the same as jelly ÇY lol

@RedwolfPrograms I think I come at it more from a language-design perspective. Some languages use 0-based indexing; other languages use 1-based. When you're designing a language, you have to pick one. But you could have picked the other. To me, those two possible choices lead to two different languages, just like a different set of builtins makes for different languages.

What do you think about e.g. Klein flags?

@AaronMiller jLrSOoKWṡSJ are grey areas for me, vcfaṠR5BbT are fine, not sure about D, the rest are cheating

Klein is kind of just 12 related programming languages bundled together. So Klein flags end up making a huge difference for how a program behaves.

A lot of times they can also make for a huge difference in golfing.

@DLosc Different indexing is one of the more gray area flags maybe, but I think it takes all of the fun out of golfing language design when instead of having to make hard decisions you give the user both options at no byte count cost

I think Klein flags are fine because it's the most sensible way to do something so central to the idea of the language

If a program written with one of the flags isn't just a trivial variation of any of the other flags, I'd say it's 100% fine

You can never relegate a step of the program with Klein's flags, only change how to approach that program

klein flags are totally fine IMO cuz the language functionality depends on a specific config but the core is still going to be the same, so the flags don't really "alter" the behavior, more so define (or rather select) what the behavior will be

I think the author's intent when making the flags also plays a role, but that's about as subjective as you can get :p

Mostly disagree, as other people use your langs in ways you could never have predicted

@RedwolfPrograms And that's a fair point. I designed Pip back when a flag cost a byte. Putting behavior in a flag should cost something, IMO. But a) that's not the consensus anymore, and b) even back then you had slightly different versions of the same language being used (e.g. 05AB1E vs 2sable).

I've always considered the flag cost debate to be like the famous quote about democracy: "Flags being free is the worst way to count flags, aside from every other way we've tried"

My opinion is that mostly I can just sort of feel flag abuse. Like there's edge cases, but mostly I feel it.

^

@AaronMiller vcfarOoKṠDV5bBT are fine / probably fine, jLMmṀSWṡJ are grey area, and HsdClGgRṪ are cheating

basically, flags that alter I/O encoding etc are fine, and that are like for debug / alter interpreter timeout. flags that format the I/O are grey area because they are good for formatting but if the format is important it falls into the third category, which is just flags that take pre/post-computing out of the program

@WheatWizard I kind of like those answers, because I can downvote, and when someone inevitably complains about the downvote, I can point to "flag abuse IMO"

I kind of like my three black boxes model, I might refine it a bit and update my flag manifesto

like the l flag is literally just taking 1 byte, the length command, and moving it from the code into the flags, which is just "-1 bytes cuz i said so"

however, i agree with caird here that it's still best to just count all these flags as free because we've had more issues with other ways

Even counting them as one byte each gives a slight, slight advantage to flag usage, and also makes it more "legal"

an interesting idea: if 1 flag = 1 byte then it'd be interesting to try to create a language where the same characters mean different things in the two halves so you can sort of shove 512 built-ins into your codepage

What'll happen first, a utopic political theory will emerge, or we'll find a perfect way to count flags? :P

probably the former tbh

With flags costing one byte each, you basically get 257 operators, one of which you can only use once

What if you had a meta flag to indicate which commands the flag becomes active on and which it isn't?

...I should giving lyxal ideas :P

also how were flags scored in the past again

by bytes in your codepage?

non-ascii flags just weren't a consideration i think

ah

@RedwolfPrograms Additionally, having the capability to use flags but not doing so encodes a slight amount of information, so you'd still have an advantage if your languages uses flags even if you use weird math stuff in the scoring to compensate for this

and this is probably why we gave up scoring them

Hmm... if Pip's list-formatting flags were considered cheating for e.g. ASCII art challenges, I think I could add a way to set the behavior in the program itself for 1 byte each...

Just make each flag double the bytes score, ez :P

This seems totally fair and balanced, says the golfer who doesn't ever use flags :P

@hyper-neutrino which I think is equivalent to my opinion that flags shouldn't be explicitly solving parts of the challenge

Oh dear, y'all are back to the flag debate

@dzaima basically

@user More of a discussion

@cairdcoinheringaahing new language, 0 * 2^36 = 0 bytes

@RedwolfPrograms Has anything new been brought up this time? Because TNB's talked about it lots of times before, and each time it's pretty much the same points

Yes

I came up with my three black boxes model

And we've discussed specific flags

Rather than arguing about hypothetical stuff

But I think we're all mostly in agreement here

Oh good

(inb4 pro-flag people show up)

@RedwolfPrograms C'mon, give us some context

No :p

@DLosc Might be too late for that, I'm pro-flags-that-don't-do-actual-computing-stuff

:P

I think everyone here is, depending on how you define "actual-computing-stuff"

^

Pip's flags are great when you're trying to debug a long program, but using them to save bytes would be pretty generally agreed to be cheating from what people here have said so far

@RedwolfPrograms Flags that literally have a one- or two-byte builtin to do the exact same thing

And that seems to be the most common opinion, just with slightly different opinions on how much counts as I/O and how much is actually saving bytes

This is why all my langs with flags use them "old-style" and have ./add++ file -i --version=5.6 -s :P

I say we make a different website for every set of flags for every language. That way, anti-flag-X-ers will have their site, anti-flag-Y-ers will have a site, anti-flag-XY-ers will have a site, etc. :P

Reverse metagolfscript?

@RedwolfPrograms It is now :P

Time to open A51 and propose a "Vyxal g Code Golf and Coding Challenges Stack Exchange" site :P

@user Even better: it's the same URL, you just put a different query string at the end ;)

Ah, and it filters out all answers using different flags/languages based on that?

Just got my timetable, got to love having to get up at 9am on Monday to attend a virtual analysis lecture :/

9am isn't that late lol

Try 5:30 :(

@user 9am is godforsakenly early :P

At least I don't have to walk 20 minutes to a lecture hall like some of my flatmates :P

...When do you normally wake up?

Around 8

Wait, 9 is earlier than 8?!

Later if I've been out/drinking

The UK is more messed up than I thought :P

@user Yeah, timezones are weird :P

@cairdcoinheringaahing Or do you mean 8:00 pm?

... ?

But there's a difference between walking up at a time and having to be compos mentis and ready to do analysis at a time

@user No :P

@user caird's been drinking too much :p

Nope, I'm stone cold sober :P

@hyper-neutrino idk, when I drink too much water, I do cytolysis, not analysis :P

Felt like crap for the past 2 days (no, it's not a hangover), and haven't been able to eat anything until this evening, so thought that going out tonight would be probably the worst decision I could make :P

yeah if you experience anal ruptures you should probably get that checked out

...wha

@cairdcoinheringaahing good job caird, making healthy lifestyle choices :D

@hyper-neutrino Don't worry, it's only temporary :P

@cairdcoinheringaahing cytolysis is cell rupture so like, analysis, yeah

I really hope my lecture isn't about that :P

(context was this message lol)

@hyper-neutrino Objection! Analysis = ana + lysis, not anal + lysis

Just typical english spelling changes over time

Made by "taught 3 years of Greek" gang

@DLosc So someone named Ana will break out of your cells?

@DLosc Oh, that's why its pronounced as "ana-lysis" :P

No, Ana ruptures

@user Oh dear, caird's in big trouble

@RedwolfPrograms That was...unfortunate phrasing

Yeah...

Not that it isn't still weird af

lol

@user ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I figure if that's what's happening, it's not like I can do anything about that :P

Of course you can, just analyze the problem :P

Watch, now's going to be the time when a CM pops in, when "anal ruptures" is at the top of the starboard

Unfortunately, I'm only able to analyse it :P

Move to the US to heal yourself :P

I don't have $300k dollars lying around

keyword is to heal yourself cuz *insert healthcare joke*

@user Serious answer: "ana" is a preposition roughly equivalent to "up" in English, so to analyze something is to "break it up " into smaller parts. Non-serious answer: yes, absolutely. :P

@RedwolfPrograms anal ruptures

@hyper-neutrino Ninja'd :P

@user ^^ Star plz

@DLosc wait so it is the same ~lyze?? omg lol

Yup

Anallyze

There, fixed :p

@user Try me, you'll have never seen someone unstar a message faster :P

Also, just a reminder, take a look at the second pinned message (w/ 8 stars, not 4) :)

Given the topic

Let us talk about the roots of words

I've always been fascinated by how helicopter came from helico and pter, not heli and copter

I think it's cool how trees and words both have roots

Words don't have roots, they absorb nutrients by people using them

@RedwolfPrograms And computers

@user And mountains

and people

And linuxes

That was a ninja I just have really slow internet

When you're about to say "Ninja'd" but someone ninjas you on the declaration of your own ninja :((((((

What's the root of "root"?

root

Root is the root word

All other words stem from it

@RedwolfPrograms and cricketers :P

@cairdcoinheringaahing Without looking, I'm going to guess it's Germanic

Wait, roots don't have stems...

Wtf english

@RedwolfPrograms It's like Python where the top class is an instance of itself or smth

classes having metaclasses, which are themselves classes :P

It's classes all the way down :P

@hyper-neutrino So yes, Germanic, but not directly through Anglo-Saxon. Interesting.

Cursed language feature: The root class inherits everything from any of the leaf classes

it's been raining for just about all of the past 24 hours straight lol

Lol, you're lucky

Although we did get a cold front, which is almost as good

This morning was actually pleasant

Its been summer weather here :/

What sorts of temperatures?

I think low 20s

Hot enough that you overheat wearing a coat

"summer weather" :p

^

Ok Texan :P

And Kansasan :P

how warm does it have to get for you to wear shorts lol

I gotta agree with Redwolf here, and I'm not a Texan

25+

It's low to mid 20s here this week for the first time in ages, and I've got all the windows open

Low 20s is kinda chilly

You may have forgotten that I live in the UK, where September is supposed to be grey and rainy, especially when you're on the coast :P

anyway it's 11 degrees outside right now

I wear shorts all year because I don't really care enough to find long pants to buy

Ah, finally some context

Got a little annoying in the winter when it was snowing but meh

lol

Lemme guess, the school's reminding you to wear long pants because they don't want you to die of frostbite again? :P

Nah, too many people were wearing shorts to prom :P

@user No, and it's not cold here :p

@cairdcoinheringaahing Does it really rain all the time in September there?

@user It basically drizzles (or is supposed to) non stop from September 1st to March 1st, then stops

@RedwolfPrograms Except occasionally

That's when the proper rain begins :P

@RedwolfPrograms Remember the start of the year?

@DLosc I mean today

@cairdcoinheringaahing That sounds annoying lol

i'm guessing you've never had school cancelled due to snow or anything like that :p

@cairdcoinheringaahing "And summer's lease hath all too short a date"

i think it was once actually cold enough that even though there wasn't much snow school got cancelled because of the frostbite hazard. at least IIRC

- An Englishman

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ you get used to it

We had school canceled because of like a centimeter of snow lol

canada gives us the worst of both worlds where we have 30+ (feels like 40) temperatures in the summer where people have fainted in my high school's stairwells before, and -30- (sometimes down to -40) temperatures in the winter where school has to be cancelled due to the frostbite hazard

Over here it's almost always either hot, rainy (in spring, usually), hot and rainy, warm but oppressively humid, or pleasant

In fact, we even had a snow day during virtual school

what

@RedwolfPrograms But only for a few days then it's bad again

@user Bad weather makeup day?

Y'all make me feel very happy about where I live

school's only cancelled if there's like over a foot of snow and sometimes they only cancel the buses and then not school itself (just high school tho uni doesn't care lmao)

@RedwolfPrograms lol

Their reason for it was something like "We will not deny our children the joy of a snow day despite this pandemic"

Fair play

Well that's nice of them

that's actually pretty cool (pun intended)

Yeah, it's a very good school board

It's probably more bureaucratic than that

They need a certain number of days in school so they plan a few extra, and if they don't need them they cancel it for a day

@RedwolfPrograms "We will not deny our children teachers and staff the joy of a snow day despite this pandemic"

Ah

Or maybe the school board wanted to play in the snow ;p

Our school board meetings have been pretty ugly for the last year or so

Lots of stuff relating to masks

i don't think my school board did any one single overly atrocious thing but i've always been rather disappointed with them and the general student opinion seems to either be "i don't care" or "yeah it's not good" (or just "it totally sucks")

@RedwolfPrograms Well, now that you mention it, I did see some middle-aged people frolicking in the snow outside :P

@RedwolfPrograms does texas still forbid mask mandates

I think so

i heard about a school board that added masks into their dress code cuz texas still has those (and i think the gov't blocked a bill to ban them); do you know anything about that / if that even happened

I guess humans gonna hume

There've been quite a few school districts ignoring or bypassing that legislation, yeah

lol

I think I heard about the dress code thing too

anyway kinda sad that public safety has to be enforced by exploiting a policy designed to control people, because otherwise it'd be controlling people to enforce public safety

Usually nobody enforces the dress code that much, but I did have a teacher in 6th grade who'd walk through the hallways with a stack of office referals and a roll of duct tape :p

At my school masks aren't mandatory unfortunately

About half of people wear them from what I can tell

damn :/

> roll of duct tape

wut

If you had holes in your jeans you'd have to walk around with your jeans duct taped back together

my university has a mask and vaccine mandate requiring proof of vaccination, lol. still uncomfortable with how close people get but i just stay farther away and it's fine; i'm only there once a week anyway. it's very nice tho

@RedwolfPrograms Also :(. Do they offer virtual classes?

No, too expensive

The schools get allotted money based on in person attendance

...Doesn't that just take a Zoom meeting running while the teacher teaches in class?

No, it's based on the number of students attending in person

@RedwolfPrograms Ugh

@hyper-neutrino We've got certain buildings that require masks, and some events require vaccination proof, but it's pretty lax for us

how many active cases y'all got in your city/region/whatever anyway

I think that technically, we're supposed to wear a mask in our accommodation when in the building, outside our flat, but no one does

@hyper-neutrino No idea, lemme google

> 73 new people had a confirmed positive test result reported on 22 September 2021.

In the entire city

My school sends out emails whenever a student gets a positive covid case, we get them daily

@cairdcoinheringaahing That's not terrible, I guess

@RedwolfPrograms Oof

province-wide we gained 463 yesterday and we have 170 total cases in my city rn

My sister's one of the idiots who refuses to get vaccinated or wear a mask too

We've gotten ~5 in the ~3-4 weeks school's been open, which is still too much

@user Given that there's half a million people in the city, that's pretty good

Oh right, I forgot how cramped Europe was

Makes social distancing really annoying, you physically only get a 1m radius circle of space around you here /s :P

@RedwolfPrograms Easy way to fix that - get covid, pass it to her and your entire family to show them how bad it is, if they survive, they'll start wearing masks :P

@cairdcoinheringaahing Could you translate that into eagle wingspan per football for me, please? :P

Thousands of people might die per day, but at least my country gives me the freedom to see other people's ugly faces /s

@user When in Europe, you have exactly 1 AK47 barrel and 5 freedom units of space around you :P

we have an entire political party here campaigning on the "fact" that lockdowns, mask mandates, school closures, and "other authoritarian sanitary measures" haven't had any impact on the pandemic, and repealing vaccine mandates and covid testing

@cairdcoinheringaahing AK-47 is russian :p

@hyper-neutrino Please tell me they're not in power

You mean the AR-15, presumably :p

but America = guns, duh :P

@user they got no seats but ironically probably contributed to accomplishing the exact opposite of what they want

@cairdcoinheringaahing No, guns = America, get your facts staright

@hyper-neutrino lol

since they split the vote with our conservative party and thus probably contributed to a lot of seats going to the libs / another small party

You know, acting crazy and doing the extreme opposite of X is a good way of getting people to do X, are you sure that wasn't their plan all along? :P

well it wasn't that they drove people to vote otherwise it's that they created an alternative to the conservative party (which I believe is pretty sensible in canada) for the crazy people thus pulling support and causing the other parties to win pluralities :P

Man, voting is so crazy

Ranked-choice voting would be a lot better (except here, I guess)

IRV ftw

@RedwolfPrograms Looks like the GRT "bug" was what we thought it was, confirmed it and forgot to mention it early :P

Choose random people from the population, no voting at all :P

How could that go wrong? :P

I came up with that idea once in 6th grade and thought I was genius

CMQ: What would be your first move as President/Prime Minister/other leadership position of <some country>?

@RedwolfPrograms As 6th graders tend to do :P

Move a small percentage of funding from military to education

And?

And?

@user Resign :P

I think people have already suggested moving money from the military to other stuff lol

Yeah, because why the frick do you even need a huge military anymore anyway

@cairdcoinheringaahing That's the responsible choice, I'd just press all the big red buttons :P

@RedwolfPrograms Some people (not me) think we need to show strength. MURICA STRONG RARRR

We do need a (strong) military to protect us, but we seem to be going overboard

I say we arm all americans with muskets and organize statewide militias with cannons and warships

So the british can't tax our tea

Everything else doesn't matter

Careful what you say, we have some Brits in here...

Hi @lyxal, which side is Australia on?

Side of what?

The Tea War

And what are the sides?

Tax the Americans vs. Don't Tax the Americans

I'd say just flip a coin

And that'd determine my stance

I have flipped a fair coin for you. It came up Heads, so you're on our side

Ighto then

Yes, Java support, just what I want in a LaTeX editor (most likely, they confused Kite, an autocompletion thingy, with Kile)

@user it also gives you support in email

Which imo is an excellent offer

@hyper-neutrino So, I did some extra reading on this, and it's related to Singmaster's conjecture, and that page actually gives a formula for calculating an arbitrary number that appears 6 times in Pascal's triangle :P

What's fascinating is that the formula uses Fibonacci numbers; \$\binom {F_{2i+2}F_{2i+3}} {F_{2i}F_{2i+3}}\$ for a non-negative integer \$i\$ will give a number that appears 6 times in Pascal's trinagle