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2:09 AM
The first fully-functional Symphony script! (prints "Symphony" to the console)
 
Hahaha, nice
 
The next Mornington Crescent :P
 
@AlexA. It was pretty easy to see what when the notification linked me to the transcript:
You need transcript proof stealth pings
 
@Calvin'sHobbies However, it doesn't show you how to execute a stealth ping
 
-1
Q: C - fun pointless code synonyms.

Albert RenshawI just discovered a fun way to increment an integer by 1. i+=!i!=+i It's a palindrome (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palindrome) Obviously it's very pointless code and you'd probably just confused people and they'd get mad and say "why not just i++;?". But there is some novelty to it that mak...

 
2:21 AM
@NewMainPosts Wow, downvoted and closed before the bot got it.
 
8 minutes behind
 
Well the history does.
@ZachGates It has been known to take 20+ min
 
@Calvin'sHobbies Really? Not sure about that.... The RSS feed updates every 10 minutes.
 
@Doorknob I'm sure I remember a conversation between me and Alex where we timed it
May 17 at 3:32, by Alex A.
@Calvin'sHobbies: Guess we have our answer. About 20 minutes.
 
Huh. Weird.
 
2:25 AM
Maybe the bot was drunk.
 
That's probably it.
 
Took it a while to find the recently-posted questions.
 
It's all because of @PhiNotPi's new avatar images for them... it's given them a bad influence. :P
 
This was way before the new images though (not that I think you're serious :P)
 
0
Q: Match strings with wildcards

JoshuaProblem: given any input string that does not contain null bytes, determine whether or not the input string matches glob as defined below: null is disallowed in both string in glob * matches zero or more characters ** is disallowed in glob ? matches exactly 1 character [ch] mat...

 
2:30 AM
Say, how do you get the exact UTC time of an old message? e.g. I'm not sure what to mouseover here to find out the seconds.
I mean, you can mouseover post times to get their exact time
 
@Calvin'sHobbies I don't think you can.
 
Wait a minute
May 17 at 3:31, by New Meta Posts
2
Q: Do we want new challenges auto posted in chat?

Calvin's HobbiesOur chatroom The Nineteenth Byte currently has 3 message feeds. For example, when there is a new meta post, it is automatically posted in chat. Do we want to have new questions from the main page be a new feed?

Mouseover that time and it says the seconds!
3:31:55
 
I don't see the seocnds :P
 
<span title="2015-05-17 03:31:55Z">May 17 at 3:31</span>
Huh.
Interesting.
 
@ZachGates Mouseover "May 17 at 3:31" (or inspect it)
 
2:35 AM
What does the Z mean?
 
@ZachGates UTC
 
Ah, ok thanks.
 
I'm not exactly sure why Z stands for UTC, though. I assume it's just arbitrary convention.
 
it stands for "Zulu" IIRC
(not like I know what that means)
 
> The letter also refers to the "zone description" of zero hours... (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinated_Universal_Time#Time_zones)
More esoterically, if it's UTC, why it the wiki page title acronym CUT?
Wait, I guess Universal Time Coordinated is ungrammatical
I was thinking it was UCT
 
2:41 AM
English: Coordinated Universal Time
French: Temps Universel Coordonné
Abbreviation: UTC???
 
Universal time: UT1. Maybe they just wanted to stick with the pattern.
 
@PhiNotPi Doesn't seem to become UTC in any language
 
I thought C stood for Center or Central.
 
Though "Koordinadong" from Cebuano made me giggle
"Central Universal" is almost an oxymoron
 
user image
9
 
2:49 AM
:D
Congrats! \o/
 
Thanks :)
 
@AlexA. Your bird avatar now needs to evolve
6
 
Congrats!
 
3:09 AM
Thanks!
@Calvin'sHobbies It started as a goose, remember? This is its final form.
 
set str "this is a test string" goto start label idxlbl set _ slice " " add
multiply _ -1 unwrap " " 1 1 return label maplbl set _ slice str add 1 unwrap
slice _ 0 1 1 unwrap slice _ 1 2 1 1 return label start map each concat wrap -1
concat index str idxlbl wrap length str 2 maplbl
^ "this is a test string".split(" ") in my new esolang.
 
Macaroni?
 
Yes. It gets even more complicated if you want to split on strings of length > 1. >:D
 
@AlexA. I'm not even sure what the current form is
But a penguin seems apt these days
 
 
1 hour later…
4:19 AM
@Calvin'sHobbies Eurasian magpie
@Doorknob Now that's some angry pasta.
 
Alex departs
 
@Calvin'sHobbies Really? I thought that everyone knew what magpies look like.
 
 
2 hours later…
6:06 AM
Wait, you regain rep from downvoted answers by deleting them?
 
Just as you lose rep if you delete an upvoted answer.
 
Oh I didn't know that
We need an xkcd bot for this room
 
7:05 AM
Does xkcd have an RSS feed?
Yes it does!
 
@StackExchange That should do it. Probably will take a few minutes.
EYYYY!
Success!
 
7:29 AM
I dare someone to golf a math challenge with this: github.com/minxomat/Recall
 
 
2 hours later…
9:24 AM
@El'endiaStarman Now wait a minute, that's not ok. This is usually something we would usually discuss on meta. You're not even a PPCG moderator. I personally think XKCD is way overused and don't want it cluttering this chatroom, especially since it has no specific relation to PPCG.
@Doorknob @MartinBüttner @Dennis @AlexA. What do the actual PPCG mods think?
 
10:05 AM
@Calvin'sHobbies it's not that much clutter at 3 posts a week, but I don't think it's necessary. If the xkcd is good someone will share it anyway.
 
10:32 AM
@MartinBüttner Right. Why bother having an unrelated feed to a comic that almost everyone knows about anyway and already gets quoted a bunch here?
2
 
10:53 AM
I'm gonna be fussy about this -> meta.codegolf.stackexchange.com/q/7079/26997
 
0
Q: Do we want XKCD autposted in chat?

Calvin's HobbiesEl'endia Starman, a moderator, but not a PPCG moderator, has recently added an XKCD RSS feed to our chatroom The Nineteenth Byte, apparently based on the suggestion of one other user. I am vehemently against this addition to our list of feeds for a number of reasons: It was done non-democratic...

 
11:22 AM
@Calvin'sHobbies I'm neither for or against it. If people want it, sure; if it bothers more people than that, get rid of it.
 
12:10 PM
I see the voters have decided. (Of course, I'm biased too.) :-P
 
Chris Jester-Young has stopped a feed from being posted into this room
 
@Calvin'sHobbies [status-completed]
4 messages deleted
 
12:30 PM
peeks at chat... Ah, fun morning so far I see.
 
12:51 PM
Wow, voting on googling google went even crazier than the usual HNQ effect.
 
1:13 PM
2
Q: Capture on the Pawn Chessboard

randomraYou should write a program or function which receives a string representing a chessboard with only pawns as input and outputs or returns whether any capture is possible on the board. Input is in a FEN-like notation describing positions of white and black pawns with no other pieces present. You s...

 
@Geobits hm 13k views... I feel like this went to reddit or HN
 
I can't find it linked anywhere yet with google
 
You googled don't google google? What kind of madman are you? :P
I'm just sad my comment with 40+(?) votes got moved to chat. The rest I don't care about :)
 
1:29 PM
@Geobits Did you downvote the question? :P
 
@Rainbolt you wanted something?
 
@ZachGates Yes. I'm not the only one that did. It's got seven downs.
 
@Geobits undeleted, despite your blatant exaggeration
 
:D
That's why I edited a ? into it. I couldn't remember exactly what it was.
 
@Geobits I downvoted, also. The second or third I think
 
1:31 PM
I bet it'd be a lot higher if it'd been there the whole time, though :P
 
1:51 PM
HELLO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!‌​!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!‌​!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!‌​!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!‌​!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!‌​!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
@Geobits so?
 
Damn my school has blocked whatever that image was supposed to be
 
its pom
 
@Optimizer Um... "so"... what? I posted an image. It wasn't meant to have any deep meaning.
 
1:56 PM
wow, is it that time of the week already?
 
Jozef Van Hove, better known as Pom, (b. Berchem, 16 November 1919 - 2 May 2014) was a Belgian comics writer and artist, mainly known for the comic strip Piet Pienter en Bert Bibber published in Gazet van Antwerpen. Pom was one of the best known Flemish comics authors of the 1950s. Between 1955 and 1995, 45 comic books were published of his newspaper comic strip. In 2010, a new album of Piet Pienter en Bert Bibber was created by Tom Bouden, with the collaboration of Luc Cromheecke, Dirk Stallaert, Steven Dupré, Martin Lodewijk, Marc Verhaegen, Willy Linthout, Jean-Pol, Steve Van Bael, Kim, Michael...
Hehe pom comics
 
@MartinBüttner I was looking for someone from the UK to tell me whether "tit" meant "a little" in the UK.
But other people who claim to be well-versed in UK speak helped me out
 
Does watching Misfits and Doctor Who count as "well-versed"? I kinda doubt it, but you never know.
 
@Geobits You need to watch soaps like Coronation Street and Eastenders to be well-versed
 
I learned "wanker" from Misfits. It was my new favorite curse word for a few months.
 
2:01 PM
Oh, Inbetweeners too
If you wanna learn about school life ;)
 
I'm honestly not sure if that's okay to post in here. In the US, I could probably call someone a wanker and they would not be offended at all, only confused.
 
I've watched other British tv, those were just the first two to come to mind. I don't normally hit the soaps though.
 
But in the UK it could be a bad word
 
It's taboo but at the lower end
 
So like "crap" and "darn"?
 
2:03 PM
More like "shit"
 
0
Q: Shuffle Sorting

Zach GatesThe Challenge Given an input of integers, shuffle the integers (outputting the initial order and each subsequent shuffle) until the integers are in order. Your program must stop when the integers are in order (least to greatest or greatest to least). Input Input may be taken as either an arr...

 
Good to know. I need to rewatch season 1 of Misfits now
Just so I can see Nathan in his undies
 
I've never heard of it :P
 
Should I disallow builtin shuffling functions on that challenge?
 
@ZachGates Remember when this happened?
-1 for changing the rules. — Dennis ♦ Sep 24 at 18:10
 
2:08 PM
 
@Rainbolt That was after someone had answered.
 
@BetaDecay Why adult?
 
@ZachGates It's almost as bad to change the rules while someone is potentially in the middle of writing an answer. Just because they haven't posted yet doesn't mean they weren't working really hard on it.
 
@BetaDecay If I use my school's internet, PPCG is blocked (SO is the only SE that isn't blocked).
 
@ZachGates Woah, that's strict
 
2:10 PM
@Rainbolt The challenge had been up for ~5 minutes when I added the "no builtins" rule. See the comment where @FryAmTheEggman requested I add my stance on builtins.
Comment has been deleted
 
Peter Taylor has answered in less time than that. Granted, five minutes isn't much to waste.
 
@ZachGates what you consider 1 step in a shuffle? changing the position of 1 number? (delete+insert)
because otherwise you can shuffle in 1 step: input; sorted_input
 
@randomra Then, it wouldn't be a random shuffle ^
 
@ZachGates you do not mention random in the question
I guess shuffle would imply that, but not obvious
 
@randomra >.>
 
@ZachGates does a quicksort with random pivot suffice as answer?
 
@BetaDecay What is that?
@randomra I'm not sure what that means..
 
@ZachGates Reddit's usually blocked so I use Google translate as a proxy :D
 
Ah, nice
I just use my hotspot :P
 
@ZachGates there are valid sorting methods with randomness, are they good answers for your question?
 
2:22 PM
@randomra Yes.
@randomra You're speaking of this‌​?
 
@ZachGates yes
 
Yes, that's a valid method for the challenge. @randomra
 
Sorry:
14
Q: Implement Bogosort

Chris Jester-YoungIs solving Sudoku too hard? Even the brute force version? Here's a coding exercise that's a little easier. I hope. :-P Write the shortest function to implement bogosort. In specific, your function should: Take an array (or your language's equivalent) as input Check if its elements are in sorte...

 
It's a bit different being that least-to-greatest or greatest-to-least are both considered ordered. And that input can be an array or string.
Still /:
 
A bit. Any answer there would probably be valid/competitive for yours, though. Unless it uses builtins I guess.
 
2:33 PM
The second-place Perl answer, for example, wouldn't be acceptable because it only sorts least to greatest. Nor would the third-place Ruby answer, since it uses a builtin function for shuffling.
Same for the Mathematica answer. And the Python answer. All the answers on that question that I've seen, really.
 
Hmm. I thought the or wording in your spec meant that we could choose either one (whichever was better for golf), not that it had to detect both.
 
Both must be detected.
> Your program must stop when the integers are in order (least to greatest or greatest to least)
@Geobits How could I rephrase it?
 
Not entirely sure what's best there. It might just have been me misinterpreting it, but I'd watch answers to make sure they check both.
It's odd for a sorting function to not care which order it's in, so people might read it the same way I did.
 
@Geobits See the examples (some are in reverse order).
 
Sure, but I'll be honest here. After reading the spec, I was sure I knew what was expected, so I glazed over the examples.
:D
 
2:40 PM
Oh, gotcha. :P
 
@ZachGates Since we have to implement our own shuffling code, does the shuffle have to be uniform?
 
@MartinBüttner Define "uniform"
 
"Every permutation will be generated with the same probability"
 
Yes. @MartinBüttner Should I add that to the description?
 
Yes
however, I think that this makes the shuffling the core of the challenge, which would probably make it a duplicate of codegolf.stackexchange.com/q/45302/8478 instead of bogosort (testing whether the numbers are in order is comparably boring, and will probably not account for the majority of the code in most languages)
 
2:48 PM
Hm
 
@PeterTaylor would you object to me changing the dupe target of the shuffling question?
 
@randomra I'm afraid that I still don't understand your chessboard format.
 
@TheNumberOne 4P3 means 4 blank squares then a (white) pawn then 3 blank squares in that row
 
3:07 PM
0
Q: BinaryNumber 8675309

JRESo I was flippling through "The Daily Worse Than Fail" and came upon the CodeSOD "A Binary Number Generator" in which an unused function turns out to generate the phone number of the user who reported a problem in a program. The story itself is something of a "Worse than Fail" in many ways, but ...

 
Odd challenge.
 
0
A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

randomraRemove Pieces from Chess Position Notation You should write a program or function which receives a string representing a chess position as input and outputs or returns the position with only the pawns and kings left. The positions in the input and output are described by FEN notation: Each ...

 
3:23 PM
sup
 
hello
 
I need to find a good challenge to golf
or perhaps compose a challenge
 
Go compose one.
 
@randomra I don't see any rows in your example that have that ... or any columns.
 
@TheNumberOne are you sure the pawns are properly monospaced in your font?
 
3:35 PM
I ran out of ideas after the ocarina challenge
 
@MartinBüttner That would explain why.
 
(actually, they aren't properly monospaced in my font, which is why the actual string describing the board is wrong)
 
@randomra I'd suggest just using p and P in the board representation instead of the Unicode pawns
@TheNumberOne nice, they are properly monospaced in your font :D
 
3:43 PM
lol
Suddenly thought of a challenge
But it had.. sort of a duplicate
0
Q: Make me a hamburger!

Grant DavisThe hamburger joint maHburger has hired you to write a program for them. It is simple: make an ASCII hamburger, using the key. Sounds simple right? Well these customers are super picky, but one thing is for sure, they do love onions. Write a program that accepts the customer's orders, and print...

 
@Calvin'sHobbies Thank you for doing that. If you hadn't I would have.
 
-1
Q: Shortest code to check if a string has only letters

m654Your task is to create a program which takes a string, and if it contains any numbers, symbols or other non-letter characters, it throws an error. Else, it returns the original string. (The string may include whitespace) ("Letters" are a-z and A-Z) Examples: Input: My name is Joe Output My na...

 
4:01 PM
@MartinBüttner will do that, when I'll have some time, sorry about the mistake/confusion @TheNumberOne
 
@randomra I can change it right now if you want
 
@MartinBüttner would be great, thanks
now I can work on getting an actual job :)
which buys food
 
C++ is a horrible language to golf in :X
 
@randomra best of luck :)
 
Even the most simple programs are huge compared to golfing languages
 
4:06 PM
It's a great language to curse in though.
2
 
0
A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

TimmyDcat Prime Digit > Prime (title still needs work - suggestions welcome) code-golf math primes Everyone is familiar with the prime number sequence in base 10, let's call it P 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, ... It's possible to construct new sequences N(x) from that sequence by inserting, prepending, ...

 
@Geobits std::god_damn(int pos)
 
All std:: calls :(
and #includes
 
You can remove the space between #include and <iostream>
#include<iostream>
IIRC
And can't you do std::cin<<s; to get s rather than std::getline(std::cin,s);?
 
Oh, so stupid of me
Just noticed isspace(c) too
c!=' '
Thanks Alex
 
4:14 PM
@sweerpotato C++ is not as fun as Java.
 
@sweerpotato No problem :)
 
oh wait
Alex, that won't work if the string is separated by spaces
will just read the first word
The include saves me a byte though
@TheNumberOne Dwarf fortress :D
 
Oh, bummer.
 
How does the syntax highlighting work @AlexA.?
 
Google prettify
<!-- language: lang-(your language tag here) -->
Or <!-- language-all: lang-xxx --> to highlight all blocks
For example C++ uses lang-cpp. There's lang-julia, lang-rb, lang-python and all sorts of crap.
 
4:20 PM
lang-java
 
Java doesn't count.
There's no such thing as Java.
What is Java
 
@AlexA. CJam's and minecraft's implementations' language.
 
Oh okay. I figured it was good for something.
 
Although someone should really reimplement CJam in C.
 
4:24 PM
Sweet @AlexA.
Didn't know the syntax for syntax highlighting
 
It was nice of Alex to highlight the correct syntax for syntax highlighting.
 
I just gave the highlights
 
:~)!
 
@sweerpotato Can you do char whatever to do a character array rather than a std::string?
 
4:27 PM
Or does the for(char c:s) syntax require s to be a std::string?
 
I think I have to use the std:: version of getline in that case
I should try, good catch
cin::getline I mean
Nah, don't think this will work
I need a streamsize
Won't work for strings of arbitrary length
 
Just do a paradigm shift over the variables involved with the algorithm to put it in a new perspective. I hear this solves most problems.
 
@Geobits Is this the software equivalent of changing the gravitational constant of the universe?
 
You can do that with a paradigm shift also, so I guess so.
 
(Which solves most engineering and terraforming problems, but tends to cause a couple of new ones.)
 
4:35 PM
I don't see how it could cause any problems. Gravity is just a myth anyway.
 
Yet people insisting on believing this unproven theory. It's amazing.
 
Forgot I could remove the type returned by main
4 bytes!
 
Can you use & instead of &&?
 
0
Q: Google test Quetion

liveprasadyou can find the quetion here. https://code.google.com/codejam/contest/10214486/dashboard#s=p3 Now I have tried it in following way: #include <bits/stdc++.h> using namespace std; #define gc getchar_unlocked #define PB push_back #define modulo 1000000007 unsigned long long total ; char str[501...

 
@sweerpotato You can't remove the return type in C++. Or are you not talking about C++?
 
4:37 PM
C++14
in main
 
Sweet, I beat all the mods to the VTC on that one :)
 
@AlexA. hmm.. perhaps
oo
Yes I can!
Nice catch
 
@sweerpotato I've never heard of this before, do you have an authoritative reference?
 
Not really
Compiles though
 
I Googled for "omit return type for main" and it says nothing pertinent to C++14.
Just because it "works on ideone" does not mean it's valid C++.
Submissions actually need to be valid for the language being used.
 
4:40 PM
@ChrisJester-Young but "languages" are essentially defined by their implementations as far as PPCG is concerned
if you find a compiler where it works, it's legit
 
I'd explicitly mention the compiler or environment if it's a weird one, though.
 
@MartinBüttner ...is there a meta post about this? Being able to exploit implementation loopholes seems wrong to me.
 
17
A: Are compiler-specific submissions allowed?

orlpYes, on PPCG a language is defined by its implementation. In case your program is not portable you should specify the interpreter or compiler.

 
@ChrisJester-Young if I omit return 0 I can omit the return type
it returns 0 implicitly
 
I've asked this once and got "as long as the target version of the compiler is publicly available" as an answer.
 
4:42 PM
@sweerpotato Correct, the implied return 0; for main is specified by C++. But the return type is still required (and it must be int, not void).
@MartinBüttner I see. Fair enough. Not my preferred answer, but I guess it's got good support (in terms of 17 upvotes).
 
I think exploiting quirks of an implementation is the lesser evil than people posting stuff where "this doesn't work in the implementation, but the language is supposed to work like this"
 
Is there a case where that could happen?
 
there always is
e.g. f and : didn't work in CJam with a large number of operators for a very long time
(notably the two-character ones)
 
Sigh. In that case I agree with your sentiments 5 messages up.
I suck at counting
 
@ChrisJester-Young omitting the return type isn't standard apparently, but some compilers allow it. So you're right
 
4:46 PM
I should use jQuery
 
Works in gcc-4.9.2 and gcc-5.1 though
 
Does anybody know/remember the name of this one hostes (paid) blogging service that is very similar to AnchorCMS?
 
we need a onebox for github repos
 
Do we?
 
5:00 PM
we do
4
45
Q: One-box repositories, issue tickets and such on GitHub in the chat

AM UnihedronGitHub links are posted in chat quite frequently, but the support of the appearance is somewhat poor: <html><head><link rel="stylesheet" href="http://cdn-chat.sstatic.net/chat/css/chat.stackoverflow.com.css"></head><body><div id="transcript"><div class="monologue user-2246344"><div class="si...

 
Ok
 
5:24 PM
Hey @ChrisJester-Young, task for you ^^
:P
 
@AlexA. ?
Oh, GitHub oneboxing.
I actually want to implement GitLab oneboxing too. :-P
 
Pffft. GitLab.
Everyone knows that hubs are better than labs.
 
I had nothing but problems using GitLab during my time at xkcd...
 
what
 
We used GitLab to organize the articles.
 
5:33 PM
You worked for xkcd?
 
Yeah, but not for long though ^^
 
That's really cool!
How did you get that job?
 
I did it on my free time, not as a job. I worked in the What-If? team. I had to stop when issues with the publishers ... happened.
 
That's ... cryptic.
 
5:37 PM
There were some legal issues with the publishers of the first What-If? book. Though those issues seem to be resolved now.
 
So could you theoretically resume volunteering with What-If?
And perhaps talk some sense into them regarding GitHub vs. GitLab?
 
I guess. I still have access to the GitLab server so I could commit, but I have to speak to the others in advance.
GitLab isn't that bad. It is just more complicated than it need to be :)
 
@MartinBüttner No, but leave a link to the current one in the comments so that it shows up in the "Related questions" sidebar.
 
Has a challenge been done involving the Sundaram sieve for finding prime numbers?
 
5:53 PM
@ZachGates Apparently not
 
Ok, good. I didn't see one; just making sure.
 

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