The Nineteenth Byte

Martin Büttner

4:00 PM

@Sp3000 wanna give it a go as well?

Sp3000

Not currently, sorry trying to Rust

Calvin's Hobbies

You guys are gonna be winning before I even post it :S

Martin Büttner

@Calvin'sHobbies you asked us to...

Calvin's Hobbies

Well yeah :P

Mauris

Sigh

Gonna get beaten to the punch because I can't compile Macaroni!

Okay, @kennytm got it.

Sp3000

4:10 PM

See cargo comment above ^^ (I only just started, so that makes two of us :P)

quartata

@MartinBüttner Hey Martin, you have MATLAB right? I think I cracked the MATLAB answer but I can't test it.

Martin Büttner

uhhh

I'd have to start up my Ubuntu VM

does it work in Octave?

octave-online.net

Mauris

@Sp3000: I'm missing a bunch of dlls I don't want to spend time looking for I guess.

Sp3000

... ah :/

quartata

I don't believe it does sadly. The program appears to print out all toolbox licenses...

Martin Büttner

4:15 PM

hm, that sounds like it depends on the particular set up anyway?

send me the code anyway

quartata

ver.Name;

Martin Büttner

give me teh codez!

ah okay

quartata

0

A: The Mystery String Printer (Cops)

MATLAB I'm going to post this, but feel free to call it invalid. The thing is although the output will always be the same on the PC I am using, it may be different on a different machines as it depends on installed licenses. If it is not valid, I'll delete the answer and will play around making ...

I'm going to give the guy the benefit of the doubt and assume he ran it on a fresh install.

Martin Büttner

Undefined variable "ver" or function "ver.Name".

quartata

Huh.

Martin Büttner

4:21 PM

okay ver exists

when was .Name added?

I'm running R2013a

quartata

4

A: How would one check for installed MATLAB toolboxes in a script/function?

I know this is a pretty old question, but a really simple answer is actually in the question (parse the output of ver) .... >> v = ver; >> setdiff({v.Name}, 'MATLAB')' ans = 'Aerospace Blockset' 'Aerospace Toolbox' 'Bioinformatics Toolbox' 'Communications System Toolbox' '...

Was just looking at this

It's from 2011 so I think your version is new enough.

Martin Büttner

hmmm

quartata

Maybe try that code verbatim?

In that answer

Martin Büttner

interesting

Doorknob

@Mauris grr, that was not the intended solution :P

Martin Büttner

4:23 PM

it works if I assign ver to v

but the output looks a bit different

ans =

Bioinformatics Toolbox


ans =

Communications System Toolbox


ans =

Computer Vision System Toolbox


ans =

...

quartata

Huh

Looks like he did something to jam them all together.

Requires more research.

Do you have a way of knowing the type of v.name?

I know MATLAB is weak typed so it might not have a typeof.

Martin Büttner

v appears to be a 1x48 array of structs, where each struct has a field Name

got it

quartata

arrayfun is a thing in MATLAB right?

Martin Büttner

v=ver;[v.Name]

quartata

Oh?

Ah. I see

Martin Büttner

4:28 PM

wait

quartata

Do you want to post it?

Martin Büttner

it does print ans = so I might need disp or something

then it's 20 bytes though :/

v=ver;disp([v.Name])

quartata

Maybe just disp([ver.name])?

That's exactly 16 bytes.

Martin Büttner

I can't use ver directly

it only works if I assign it to a new variable

quartata

I guess the guy just assumed that he could lop off the ans.

I'll ask.

Martin Büttner

4:31 PM

I already did

quartata

Der

Mauris

Hm. kennytm asked Does the solution contain non-ASCII characters? but I don't think I'm obliged to answer that?

(I really feel like answering: it's gs2, go figure.)

Nobody's saying anything about the printed string, though

Or, I mean, kenny isn't

quartata

I suppose technically the language specific token thing would apply to GS2.

Mauris

These challenges are really dumb. I give up.

Built-in cryptographic primitives (includes any rng, encryption, decryption, and hash) aren't allowed. <-- this rule is supposed to save them, but multiplying and adding together bignums is surprisingly good "crypto".

quartata

Heh

Martin Büttner

4:36 PM

hey, don't blame the CnR genre for the faults of a particularly bad example ;)

Mauris

Especially for APL challenges: how is finding which combination of sin/cos/exp prints 0.3447320498320394J6.1247385942340285 any different from a hash function?

There are very good CnR challenges, but this isn't one of them; the edit distance one suffered similar problems

I guess if your challenge needs a no crypto rule it's not very good

Doorknob

I challenge anyone to crack my Ruby submission. Pretty sure nobody'll be able to do it. :P

quartata

@Doorknob Oh wow

Ugh

Calvin's Hobbies

@MartinBüttner I bet the Alex task will be short. Numpad maybe not so much

Martin Büttner

@Mauris I agree, but it's surprisingly hard to come up with a CnR challenge where this sort of number crunching doesn't turn the robbers' challenge into a brute force party.

Calvin's Hobbies

4:40 PM

^ definitely

Sp3000

@Mauris The no crypto rule has been in quite a lot of challenges actually, e.g. Unscramble. For one thing, trig functions are faster to brute force than crypto hashes at least (or I'd hope so)

But yeah, I'm just going to skip all the ones which look like brute force. I mean, something like str(a**b)[x:y:z] is just painful

Martin Büttner

@Calvin'sHobbies 21 for Alex

Mauris

I'm thinking more of prime factorization though. That's the real hell

Martin Büttner

might be shorter in Retina

18 (untested)

Calvin's Hobbies

I suppose I could allow different languages..maybe

Martin Büttner

4:43 PM

wait this doesn't work...

more like 30 in Retina

Beta Decay

Have the obvious problems in the CnR been sorted out yet?

quartata

How do you make a multi-line code box?

Mauris

Prefix each line with four spaces

Calvin's Hobbies

Or Ctrl-k or the little button for it

Optimizer

or just don't

quartata

4:58 PM

OK.

Martin Büttner

@quartata He clarified that he omitted the ans=, so you can post the solution now

quartata

Trivial answer converted to comment.

What

Martin Büttner

yeah that happens

Mauris

Oh, so I'm not crazy.

Can we get rid of that? :<

Martin Büttner

yeah, by adding an explanation to your answer :P

quartata

5:03 PM

Let's see how well this goes.

0

A: The Mystery String Printer (Cops)

Groovy Range <= 128 String: eert.scireneg.tcelfer.nu egami.twa.ava noitatonna.tcelfer.nu epocs.scireneg.tcelfer.nu snaeb.ava gniggol.litu.nu elbat.gniws.xava oin.ava trec.ytiruces.ava piz.litu.ava resrap.scireneg.tcelfer.nu elif.oin.ava ytilibissecca.xava emit.ava stcejbOevitcelfer.scireneg.tc...

Calvin's Hobbies

5 more tasks, hmmmm

quartata

Wait, we can't use RNG?

When was this

I thought we were allowed to use RNG...

Well gotta redo this now.

Optimizer

facebook.com/video.php?v=418836768314506

^ most honest ghost reaction

Martin Büttner

@Calvin'sHobbies 37 for numpad, but it's most certainly not optimal

quartata

...take two

0

A: The Mystery String Printer (Cops)

Groovy Range <= 128 String: eert.scireneg.tcelfer.nu egami.twa.ava noitatonna.tcelfer.nu epocs.scireneg.tcelfer.nu snaeb.ava gniggol.litu.nu elbat.gniws.xava oin.ava trec.ytiruces.ava piz.litu.ava resrap.scireneg.tcelfer.nu elif.oin.ava ytilibissecca.xava emit.ava stcejbOevitcelfer.scireneg.tc...

This should be basically uncrackable

OK maybe not totally uncrackable

But if it is cracked I'll be pretty damn impressed

Mauris

5:13 PM

Rare footage of Dennis promoting his esolang. youtube.com/watch?v=dWLFQd0lXjQ

quartata

Uploader has not made this available in your country

Wat

Optimizer

^

I see why its rare

DankMemes

"The uploader has not made this video available in your country."

muddyfish

^

DankMemes

rarer than the rarest pepes I guess

Sp3000

5:17 PM

^

quartata

Any thoughts on my Groovy printer?

I want to make sure I didn't break any more rules...

muddyfish

before i do another one, is rot-13 encryption?

Calvin's Hobbies

What is?

DankMemes

no

muddyfish

ok

when i googled it, it said it was but it was so simple

DankMemes

5:18 PM

the point of disallowing rand / crypto is because the only way to solve those is by brute force

rot13 is easy to decode

Calvin's Hobbies

It could be called very weak encryption

quartata

Oh nevermind.

DankMemes

so I posted this codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/60402/20666

quartata

Yeah, I'd say rot 13 qualifies as a cipher.

Mauris

I like the "gratis interpreter available" rule. I don't particularly feel like buying a TI-89.

DankMemes

5:21 PM

ah didn't see that

well there are some emulators available

not that I could get one working on my windows system

Mauris

Well, I don't think this challenge has that rule!

DankMemes

welp

I thought I just skipped a rule and was afraid I'd have to delete my entry

Sp3000

I commented similarly on a Mathematica answer but... shrugs

DankMemes

hey I got an emulator working on my laptop

the thing is, you don't actually need TI-BASIC, you could solve it in another language and then port that

Calvin's Hobbies

Anyone know why horizontal lines aren't showing up between some tasks? They show up in the edit preview.

7

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Cramming The Gramming - Twelve Task Tweet Your boss just emailed you a list of 12 programming tasks he needs done as soon as possible. The tasks are simple enough but your boss, being a young software tycoon suckled by social networking, insists that your solutions be able to fit within a single...

DankMemes

5:35 PM

they all show up for me

Martin Büttner

same here

Calvin's Hobbies

Oh! Darn browser slightly zoomed out

New Sandboxed Posts

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

An Affinity for Ciphers You, an armchair cryptographer, have noticed that the first letters of each word in your neighbor's mail (yes, you read it -- how else would you know if he's plotting something?) look very suspicious put together. To make sure that his mail is safe to send to its destinat...

Calvin's Hobbies

^ posted 7 seconds ago, mustbe a new record for the postbot

Optimizer

If I know the last posting time, I can time my submission to come within 3 seconds

Martin Büttner

5:41 PM

@Calvin'sHobbies 13 for clocks, probably not optimal

DankMemes

why is https on meta.codegolf giving me an SSL error?

meta be insecure

It's a known issue.

feature*

2

PhiNotPi

5:43 PM

Meta does not support https

Eridan

The "The mystery String Printer" challenge is fun to work on, but it's hard to work around shortcuts in smaller programs. I had a Fishing program that was supposed to get to 65617 by squaring 9 twice and concatenating 7 but neglected to realize that it's easier to just write 65617... Oops

Martin Büttner

@Calvin'sHobbies 11 (subpar, yay)

Calvin's Hobbies

@MartinBüttner Now you've already got a score of 5 or 6. I need some Martin kryptonite for the last few to make it even ;)

@Doorknob What is Martin's biggest programming horror?

Martin Büttner

I haven't actually saved any of them (apart from the one I posted here)

@Calvin'sHobbies flood fill? (not in general, but in CJam definitely)

Doorknob

@Calvin'sHobbies uhhhh... Hexagony?

Martin Büttner

5:52 PM