The Nineteenth Byte

11:02 AM

Yay, another BF answer=)

1

Brainfuck, 16321 3602 1597 Almost as short as Java. This is just the trivial answer generated by another program, This is still a computer generated answer, but I am sure there are way shorter solutions! The general idea is initializing the cells to 4 B F i u z. If the program has to output a nu...

randomra

11:22 AM

@MartinBüttner I missed that you implemented Pada, nice!

and you added a random functionality too: new_state = @state.pop || rand(2)

if it will be used, that randomness will be a great source of confusion

Martin Büttner

@randomra I discussed that with the author via email... I think he wanted to make some changes to the language and also implemented it in the meantime.

New Sandboxed Posts

11:53 AM

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Starry Metagolf meta-golf stack Starry is a funny esoteric programming language in which code consists only of +*.,`' where the actual command is determined by the number of spaces in front of it. That makes it tricky even to golf fixed-output challenges, because different commands can account ...

Stefnotch

@MartinBüttner Seems like a cool challenge! (It isn't a codegolf, that's unusual and makes the challenge unique! :D )

Martin Büttner

we've had a few of these before (see metagolf), but I think Starry should be particularly interesting.

Stefnotch

meta.codegolf.stackexchange.com/users/31362/sandbox <==How did that guy get his 5 rep? By posting the question?

Martin Büttner

two suggested edits I think

codegolf.stackexchange.com/users/31362/sandbox?tab=reputation

Stefnotch

XD

@MartinBüttner Ok, I will add an explanation of what duct tape coding is. And, should I leave the bonus out? (Or should I just remove the underhanded tag?)

Martin Büttner

12:00 PM

with or without the bonus, the tag doesn't seem right

Stefnotch

Ok!

(But I love that tag...XD)

Martin Büttner

as for the bonus, it's not a bad idea, but you might want to decide to either make it mandatory or leave it out completely.

@Stefnotch when I saw the tag my mouse moved instinctively towards the downvote button, which I only didn't press because after reading the entire proposal I noticed it had nothing to do with the usual underhanded challenges :P

Stefnotch

Oh! Ok....

Hmmm...should I leave the bonus out or will it make the challenge too easy? If I were to make it mandatory, would the challenge be too hard?

I guess I will leave it out...

Martin Büttner

I think any non-trivial task is tricky with duct-tape-coding.

You could even allow regex. I don't see it making the task trivial.

Stefnotch

:D Maybe...

Though, I guess I will just leave it there. I doubt anybody is going to even try to solve it with a regex...

New Main Posts

1:05 PM

0

Q: Pentomino Validator

As someone who can't be bothered to look at their pentominos to see if it makes a rectangular shape, I've decided to make you write a program that does it. Your task Given some input split by newlines containing 12 unique characters, decide if it is a valid solution. A valid solution MUST Ha...

VoteToClose

1:55 PM

I don't know what to put as my length 5 snippet for Vitsy. :c

New Main Posts

2:18 PM

0

Q: Layout my tiles for me

I'm retiling my kitchen with different coloured tiles. In fact, it's going to have at least 2 colours - and 26 colours as a maximum. But, I'm fussy. I want this wall to look random, but sometimes random isn't random enough. So, when I lay out my tiles, I don't want to have any the same colour n...

code-golf random

aditsu

2:44 PM

@MartinBüttner just saw the new ticket, what's wrong with {…}fI for example?

Martin Büttner

@aditsu The intention is that the command would also work with while loops, maps and all other sorts of loops.

aditsu

ah, ok

Martin Büttner

Maps like that are sort of doable now with ee, but it's not ideal either

In fact, you could then retire fX for a different use, because {}* would work like it.

oh, except for ArrayList Block fX I guess.

Sp3000

If it helps, a good use case would be something like Collatz, where you want to find the length of the Collatz chain starting from n

Anonymous

So on the topic of:

Anonymous

2:56 PM

8

Q: Disallowing Explicit Exclusion of Languages

We've had discussion on a related topic before, where the general consensus is that challenges should be language-agnostic by default, but specific-language challenges were also acceptable within reason. Spurred by this question (which was closed for an unrelated reason), the discussion was brou...

discussion close-reasons

Anonymous

Is it fair to say that we are all in agreement that challenges that ban/heavily penalize certain lanaguages for no specified, legitimate reason are off-topic and should be closed as such?

Anonymous

There's still some debate it seems about explicitly banning languages for semi-legitimate reasons (such as the task being trivial in the language), but I think we have a pretty clear consensus of what constitutes an illegitimate reason.

Doorknob

@Mego if the task is trivial in a certain language, it's probably the task's fault for being boring

Anonymous

@Doorknob That's how I feel, though Peter's proposal (which only differs in the proposed method of handling those challenges that are trivial in certain languages) has a lot of support as well.

Sp3000

I don't get why TIOBE Top 20 is apparently okay but disallowing specific languages/language classes isn't

TheDoctor

3:02 PM

codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/63942/… aww deleted just as i was finishing my solution...

Anonymous

@Sp3000 This meta post seems to indicate that specific-language (or specific-set-of-languages) questions are on-topic, though less preferable to language-agnostic questions. I don't necessarily agree with it either, but the consensus is there.

Anonymous

I think the votes will decide if a specific-language challenge is interesting enough to overcome the fact that it's not agnostic

Doorknob

@TheDoctor how were you able to write a solution to such an unclear challenge?

TheDoctor

random.choice()

import sys,random as r
a,b,c=map(int,raw_input().split())
x=[[0]*a]*b
for i in range(a):
	for j in range(b):
		b=list(range(c))
		try:b=[i for i in b if i!=x[i-1][j]]
		except:pass
		try:b=[i for i in b if i!=x[i][j-1]]
		except:pass
		x[i][j]=r.choice(b)+1
print x

idk...

Sp3000

I'd be careful with the reuse of i as a variable there

TheDoctor

3:10 PM

blinks

ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

aditsu

@TheDoctor haha, somebody hasn't read (or doesn't understand) xkcd 221

Doorknob

@TheDoctor This is why you should use long, descriptive variable nam— wait a second.

3

Sp3000

@Mego I'm not sure I'd consider TIOBE Top 20 as a "set of languages" as such, because there's nothing much in common apart from, well, their commonality (also there's no mention of TIOBE in your linked post). To me, I kinda see TIOBE as a long list of disallowed languages, even more "legitimate" ones :/

@TheDoctor List comps leak. (Credits to Lembik for teaching me that)

Doorknob

@Sp3000 I don't have a strong position on either side, but it's worth noting that there's a difference between a "blacklist" and a "whitelist" of languages, so to speak.

Sp3000

Or, at least in Python 2 (it's 2 right? You've got raw_input and print without parens, yet you do list(range()) for some reason)

TheDoctor

3:13 PM

@Sp3000 ??

Sp3000

x = "Hello, World!"
y = [x for x in range(10)]
print x

Oh wait, wrong comment. What were you trying to point out?

New Main Posts

0

Q: Layout my tiles for me

I'm retiling my kitchen with different coloured tiles. In fact, it's going to have at least 2 colours - and 26 colours as a maximum. But, I'm fussy. I want this wall to look random, but sometimes random isn't random enough. So, when I lay out my tiles, I don't want to have any the same colour n...

code-golf random grid

aditsu

repost? o_O

TheDoctor

carrot.svg

Anonymous

3:29 PM

@Sp3000 That's the impression I got from the meta discussion, at least - whitelists are allowed, blacklists typically not unless there is a really good reason. I personally don't like restricting languages (though I was going to do it for a challenge, I thought about it and decided against it). Like @Doorknob said, there is a difference between a blacklist and a whitelist.

Anonymous

The best way to approach these issues, I think, is to take small steps that the community can agree on, and work from there. Disallowing challenges that forbid languages for no good reason (or no reason at all) is a policy I think we can all get behind.

Anonymous

There are good reasons to have specific language challenges though - using a single language is a popular choice for KOTH because it drastically simplifies setting up the controller.

quartata

allo

Anonymous

Hiya

quartata

I see gamma golf has a lot of answers now

And all of them use Zereges formula wow so creative

Did I miss anything of interest?

Anonymous

3:36 PM

The Lanzcos and Spounge approximations are neat

quartata

@Mego But not short enough sadly

My TI-BASIC Spounge one was 81 bytes (at least it would have been if it worked)

The brute-forcey one is 35

Might have made an interesting fastest-code

...not saying that it isn't interesting as it is, just that it would have made a cool fastest-code

Anonymous

@quartata Maybe. Though that would add a lot of complexity - requiring speed and precision

Anonymous

I'm glad you liked it :) it was a simple idea that worked well

Anonymous

I'm sandboxing my first KOTH right now :P

quartata

@Mego ooh

I've never participated in a KOTH because I'm too stupid to figure them out

Anonymous

3:42 PM

This one isn't too complicated

Stefnotch

(Doorknob already got 44 stars...)

Anonymous

@quartata Want a hint?

quartata

@Mego ?

Stefnotch

Which KOTH is it?

Anonymous

quartata

3:50 PM

Checkers...

That I can do!

Κριτικσι Λίθος

What is a KOTH?

quartata

King of the Hill

You write bots and they duke it out to ~~win $10,000~~

Doorknob

@quartata s|</?s>|---|

quartata

It's funnier when it isn't actually struck through though.

Κριτικσι Λίθος

@Doorknob Is that a regex expression?

Doorknob

3:52 PM

@quartata ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@ΚριτικσιΛίθος yes

TheDoctor

lol

quartata

@ΚριτικσιΛίθος Probably in that hellspawn language they call Ruby

Stefnotch

LOL ~~strike through~~

:D

Doorknob

@quartata ... Ruby? huh?

quartata

@Doorknob Ye

fite me

Doorknob

3:53 PM

I didn't know that regex is specific to Ruby...

Stefnotch

@ΚριτικσιΛίθος "|" most likely stands for "or"

quartata

Who uses pipes to separate them?

Traditionally it is /

Doorknob

me, when there's /s in the pattern or replacement, so I don't have to escape them

Κριτικσι Λίθος

I put @Doorknob's regex in regexr.com , but it says there is an error

quartata

I guess you can use whatever char you want in Perl or Ruby but it isn't the tradition dammit

Think of the tradition

Doorknob

3:54 PM

@quartata only Perl AFAIK. And sed of course.

Stefnotch

@ΚριτικσιΛίθος It is the "or" at the end...

Doorknob

@ΚριτικσιΛίθος well duh, regexr apparently puts in the delimiters for you (not to mention it's not a regsub, just a match)

@Stefnotch no it doesn't

Stefnotch

The error there gets caused by that...

Doorknob

1 min ago, by Doorknob

@ΚριτικσιΛίθος well duh, regexr apparently puts in the delimiters for you (not to mention it's not a regsub, just a match)

Stefnotch

Uh?

Κριτικσι Λίθος

3:56 PM

@Doorknob What's the point of showing your message again?

Doorknob

@ΚριτικσιΛίθος to answer @Stefnotch

Stefnotch

(And I still am confused)

Doorknob

@Stefnotch The website apparently already includes the regex delimiters (/.../) for you. Also, it's a simple match, rather than a replace.

Anonymous

@Stefnotch tl;dr regexr is dumb

Doorknob

^

Stefnotch

3:58 PM

@Mego Oh, that's simple! :D

Κριτικσι Λίθος

regex101.com also says that there is an error.

Anonymous

@ΚριτικσιΛίθος also dumb

Doorknob

...

5 mins ago, by Doorknob

@ΚριτικσιΛίθος well duh, regexr apparently puts in the delimiters for you (not to mention it's not a regsub, just a match)

Κριτικσι Λίθος

This regex gives no errors: s|<\/?s>|---|

New Sandboxed Posts

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

code-golfmath Find runs of triple multiples of squares Your task is simple: For a given input N, find all runs of three or more consecutive integers which are all perfect squares or multiples of perfect squares. You should then list each triplet (or greater) on a single line, indicating the sq...

Doorknob

4:00 PM

@ΚριτικσιΛίθος are you reading the message that I'm continually quoting? :/

Κριτικσι Λίθος

@Doorknob What is a delimiter?

Doorknob

um, anything that delimits

(usually / in regexen as noted by @quartata)

Stefnotch

What's a regsub?

Doorknob

regex substitution

Stefnotch

regexr.com has a substitution thingy...

Κριτικσι Λίθος

4:05 PM

I even tried the regex on the JS console, it gives an error:
`Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected token |(…)`

Doorknob

JS doesn't support arbitrary delimiters

Κριτικσι Λίθος

Where will your regex work?

Doorknob

Perl? sed?

Κριτικσι Λίθος

Oh. I don't do Perl or sed.

Doorknob

llama@llama:~$ sed -r 's|</?s>|---|g'
these are <s>some</s> words
these are ---some--- words

Stefnotch

4:09 PM

Javascript
"these are <s>some</s> words".replace(/<s>|<\/s>/g,"---");

Doorknob

or just /<\/?s>/...

Stefnotch

Oh, yeah! (I keep forgetting that the ? exists..)

orlp

? is not even necessary

_? can be translated by (_|)

so it's not a primitive

similarly, _+ can be translated to __*

Anonymous

Shame on you @orlp

Anonymous

Use those syntax highlighting tags

orlp

4:15 PM

hrm?

what do you mean

Anonymous

In your tile code

Anonymous

Anonymous

Add that two lines above the code

orlp

usually it autodetects

Anonymous

Nope

Anonymous

4:18 PM

waits for sandbox bot

orlp

@Mego yes?

on stackexchange it usually automatically detects the language used and highlights

Anonymous

@orlp Oh huh, I've never seen it do that. I've always had to go in and manually add syntax highlighting to my answers.

Anonymous

Probably because my code usually ends up not resembling the language it's written in

orlp

example

0

A: Writing recursive solutions to a list

I would suggest iteration over recursion: def catalan_numbers(N): C = [1] for n in range(1, N): C.append((4*n - 2) * C[-1] // (n + 1)) return C

Anonymous

"is that brainfuck?" "no it's python" "are you sure?" "no"

Anonymous

4:21 PM

@orlp The interesting thing about that question is, in the second piece of code, there actually is a base case. for x in range(0,0) doesn't execute.

Anonymous

The issue is that the code is wrong

Anonymous

int*list doesn't work

Anonymous

catalan_numbers(n) should be catalan_numbers(x)[-1]

Anonymous

Or just don't use a for loop like the answers suggested :P

Stefnotch

Huh, what's that syntax highlighting thing you are talking about?

Doorknob

4:23 PM

@orlp that's done by the python tag. Without a language tag, syntax highlighting falls back to either generic highlighting or none

Anonymous

Hah! I knew it!

orlp

@Doorknob ah

Anonymous

Which is why we have to manually tag our languages

New Sandboxed Posts

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

King Me - Draughts King of the Hill Draughts (or checkers, as it is known in the United States) is a well-known international game. I was surprised that we have not had a draughts King of the Hill yet, so here's one! In case you're unfamiliar with the rules (or perhaps you need a refresher), her...

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Can I win in two more moves at Three Men's Morris? code-golf game The Game You remember the classic game "Nine Men's Morris" or simply "Mill"? There's variation called Thee Men's Morris which is a bit like a mutable tic-tac-toe. Rules This is the blank board of the game: [ ]–[ ]–[ ] | \ ...

Anonymous

@NewSandboxedPosts Yay

Stefnotch

4:25 PM

Would  work?

Anonymous

@Stefnotch I don't think there's syntax highlighting for bf. Not that it needs it, there are only 8 characters.

Doorknob

@Stefnotch that would be equivalent to lang-none

Anonymous

No words/expressions means no use for highlighting

Anonymous

The only syntax rule in bf is that you need matching []s, and highlighting doesn't help that any

Stefnotch

XD What languages do have syntax highlighting?

Doorknob

4:28 PM

@Stefnotch github.com/google/…

Anonymous

Alternatively meta.stackexchange.com/a/184109/307833

Stefnotch

Oh!

Thomas Kwa

4:43 PM

@ZachGates I explained it in that answer.

Anonymous

Programming in Java makes me wish I was doing something more fun, like having a root canal without anesthesia

Stefnotch

LOL! (I see, a Java fan...)

Nathan Merrill

5:00 PM

doesn't understand the hate for Java

Anonymous

It's an unpleasantly mediocre language

Nathan Merrill

its not exceptional in anything, but does well in everything

Anonymous

Jack of all trades, master of none

Anonymous

5:20 PM

tumbleweed.png

Thomas Kwa

@Mego I agree

I haven't touched Java since last term, and I won't unless I need to.

Anonymous

Crap, I'm up to 9 votes on showcase

Anonymous

I haven't even figured out what to do for #8

Thomas Kwa

Oh, suggestion for Seriously: A large-number constant

2^32 or so

(Unless it's unnecessary; I don't know the language well enough to tell)

Anonymous

5:36 PM

5╙╙ == 2**32

Nathan Merrill

if I flip a coin continuously until I get a tails, and I get 1 point for each heads, what is the distribution called?

Thomas Kwa

@Mego That's three bytes long

@NathanMerrill Exponential? Geometric?

Anonymous

@NathanMerrill Bernoulli

Thomas Kwa

@Mego Huh, didn't know it was called that

Anonymous

I paid attention in stats class :)

Thomas Kwa

5:39 PM

Wait no

It's not Bernoulli, it's geometric.

Bernoulli is (1-p)% chance of 0 and p% chance of 1

TheDoctor

woof

Anonymous

Oh, the Bernoulli is a single trial

Thomas Kwa

Right

Anonymous

It's binomial for multiple trials

Thomas Kwa

No, @NathanMerrill was asking for the distribution of

the number of heads before the first tail

Which is geometric

Anonymous

5:41 PM

Ooohhhh

Anonymous

Yeah

Anonymous

It's hard to think about stats and board games at the same time

Nathan Merrill

you guys are switching too fast for me to look these things up

Thomas Kwa

@Mego which board game?

Anonymous

@ThomasKwa Draughts

Anonymous

5:46 PM

I'm working on the controller and stuff for my sandboxed koth

Thomas Kwa

6:01 PM

I'm actually working on a Connect 4 AI in TI-BASIC

It's really difficult to implement minimax with such a limited language, especially because I need to think about speed optimization from the start

TheDoctor

6:16 PM

@ThomasKwa games in ti basic are difficult: github.com/red-green/Ti_Tidbits/blob/master/TI-84%20Programs/…

Thomas Kwa

@TheDoctor Don't use so many Goto, and don't Goto out of an If:Then:End block.

TheDoctor

y

Thomas Kwa

Goto is slow

Anonymous

Goto considered slow

Thomas Kwa

Also, Goto out of an If:Then:End block or a For( loop or a While loop causes the calculator to think it's still in the loop, and keep the loop pushed on the stack

This causes a memory leak of 10ish bytes every time you do it

Anonymous

6:21 PM

TI really needs better optimizations for TI-BASIC :P

TheDoctor

^

Thomas Kwa

So if you do it more than a few times, your program gets slow and eventually throws ERR:MEMORY

Anonymous

And by better I mean more than 0

Thomas Kwa

Also, there's a single-line If

TheDoctor

usually shut the box ends before that

Thomas Kwa

6:21 PM

If (condition):one-line statement

TheDoctor

i wrote that two years ago...

Thomas Kwa

You don't need to do If:Then:[one-line statement]:End

Oh, okay

Anonymous

I need suggestions for things to show off in Seriously for the popcon showcase

TheDoctor

Seriously, nobody understands it but you

Stefnotch

Your README.md got a few cool ones?

Take a bunch of Dennis' programs and turn them into seriously small programs?
http://meta.codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/7346/33160

Thomas Kwa

6:30 PM

Do we consider it beating Dennis if we use a different language?

TheDoctor

meta.codegolf.stackexchange.com/posts/7370/revisions

Thomas Kwa

@TheDoctor *shudders*

TheDoctor

tag-abuse-is-not-a-bad-thing-and-as-a-matter-of-fact-we-should-use-them-all-the-time

Stefnotch

Not sure...but outgolfing one of Dennis' CJam programs does take a lot of skill!
If you feel like being evil, you could try to beat his PPCG masterpiece:
http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/51228/rearranging-words/51238#51238

test

Thomas Kwa

That ain't code-golf though

ETHproductions

6:34 PM

@ThomasKwa Dennis is adaptive to new languages, so it does count, but it won't last long.

Thomas Kwa

@ETHproductions I don't think Dennis will ever touch TI-BASIC

flawr

@Mego Do you intend to use all ascii characters as commands in Seriously? (At some point in the future?)

ETHproductions

@ThomasKwa Well then, you're our only hope.

Thomas Kwa

Then again, TI-BASIC will probably stop winning any challenges now that there's Seriously

APL/J/K and Pyth beat TI-BASIC at simple math challenges too

but Seriously is probably just better than TI-BASIC

flawr

How about TI-ACIDIC?

3

El'endia Starman

6:37 PM

.....maybe I'll call my next language that. :P

flawr

I'd love that=)

Thomas Kwa

@flawr That took me a while; at first I was like "is that a play on EBCDIC"?

flawr

I considered making a derivate of Octaved and call it Septime=)

TheDoctor

when will is stop?? 45 stars and counting on the pinned post

Anonymous

@flawr yep

PhiNotPi

6:44 PM

okay seriously stop abusing pins

ETHproductions

Unless I'm mistaken, that's almost twice as many stars as second-place

Anonymous

@ThomasKwa No, it's a chemistry pun

Thomas Kwa

@Mego I eventually got that; it just tripped me up at first

El'endia Starman

@ETHproductions IIRC second place has 23 stars. So just one more.

Anonymous

@ETHproductions He learns... Adapts...

Anonymous

6:45 PM

@PhiNotPi ?

Anonymous

@TheDoctor Challenge issued

TheDoctor

ETHproductions

use square brackets around the text, followed by parentheses around the URL

Anonymous

@TheDoctor [text](url)

TheDoctor

i know that

i was testing

Anonymous

6:47 PM

@Stefnotch That's never gonna happen lol

Thomas Kwa

I have the gamma function in 27 bytes of TI-BASIC, and 19ish of Pyth

PhiNotPi

@Mego It's supposed to be related to the pinned post.

Anonymous

@PhiNotPi Oh, a pin pun

El'endia Starman

@ThomasKwa WHUT?

How'd you get rid of 8 bytes?!

Thomas Kwa

Sorry, Pyth 21

Oh

ETHproductions

6:52 PM

Woohoo auto-quote-insertion

Thomas Kwa

TI-BASIC has product of a list.

ETHproductions

I should work on Japt's interpreter more

Thomas Kwa

That however doesn't work, since TI-BASIC only has 999 element lists

El'endia Starman

Ahhh...

Thomas Kwa

TI-BASIC also has summation, which doesn't store the results in a list, but not capital-pi product

El'endia Starman

6:53 PM

Minkolang does too, but to use it is no change in the number of bytes.

Thomas Kwa

So I take the log of everything, use summation, and then take e to that power

El'endia Starman

oooh

I think I can use that trick too.

Thomas Kwa

I still need to test it, but I don't see any issues with rounding

Wait, I may be able to do that in Pyth too...

El'endia Starman

Is the log of negative numbers not defined?

It should be complex, right?

Thomas Kwa

...wait

are there ever negative numbers in the product?

Of course there are -_-

Yes, it's complex

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