The Nineteenth Byte

ais523

6:00 PM

I just made my program a few million times slower to save two bytes

14

that feels like the real spirit of golfing just there :-D

Riker

@ATaco btw, that's a cool article about swear words in AUS

the one you linked on the chatiquette meta

@ais523 congrats lol

Poke

@ais523 efficiency has no place when going for the ultimate golf

Geobits

Tell that to golf ball and club manufacturers :P

Poke

6:21 PM

@Geobits I don't care how efficient my putt was as long as the ball got into the hole in the least number of strokes

preferably 0

Kritixi Lithos

I wonder if code-golfing will be more popular than "real" golf in the future

New Main Posts

1

Q: There's no such thing as a free lunch

...or is there? Your challenge is to parse my lunch bill, which contains the base price, tips, discounts, coupons, and extras and find out if my lunch was $0 or less. If this is the input: 12.34 15 tip 25 discount 1.5 extra 2 coupon Then the output might be false. Here's how it works: 12.34 ...

2

Q: Generate all Brain-Flak Snippets

This question is the second of several Brain-flak Birthday challenges designed to celebrate Brain-Flak's first Birthday! You can find more information about Brain-Flak's Birthday here Challenge For this challenge you'll be generating all fully matched strings from a list of brackets. To bor...

code-golf string permutations balanced-string

Kritixi Lithos

Or if it will become an e-sport or something

Riker

only among nerds

DJMcMayhem

\o/ Just cast my 2,000th flag across SE!

Erik the Outgolfer

6:35 PM

And how do you know?

Kritixi Lithos

~~elephants~~ cats can remember

DJMcMayhem

~~An elephant~~ A cat never forgets

Lol

Kritixi Lithos

btw "elephants can remember" is a book by Agatha Christie

It's in the Poirot series

Erik the Outgolfer

It seems that ~~elephants~~ cats ~~may lie~~ always tell the truth no matter what.

DJMcMayhem

27

Q: Stack Exchange Global Flag Summary

This is a userscript that provides a network wide flag summary for all Stack Exchange sites. If you are logged into the Stack Exchange network and you have this script installed, you can visit the new flags tab in your Stack Exchange profile: How does it work? The script scans your netw...

script flags

Erik the Outgolfer

6:37 PM

oh

Riker

@HyperNeutrino can I assume the arrays won't have more than 1k elements?

for here

or, can i output a 3 element array with the answer? i.e. if it's "True", [True True True] is the output

Dennis

6:55 PM

@KritixiLithos It already is. Ask anyone in this room.

ais523

the club-and-ball sport of golf arguably has negative popularity

Kritixi Lithos

I meant popularity worldwide

Riker

@DJMcMayhem golfier: "A ~~n elephant~~ cat"

ais523

because a subset of people see it as elitist and/or wasteful of resources

that said, it wouldn't surprise me if people looked down on codegolfers too

Dennis

@KritixiLithos As my father used to say: never trust a statistic you haven't falsified yourself.

3

ais523

7:01 PM

interestingly, a number of golf courses have converted to footgolf courses in order to try to attract more customers

(it's like golf, except the holes are much bigger, the ball is a soccer ball, and you have to try to kick it into the holes)

Jan Dvorak

Sounds like fun. I've never tried real golf but I like minigolf.

Phoenix

Hmmmm minicodegolf?

Martin Ender

@DJMcMayhem @WheatWizard @Riley @0' big thanks to the Brain-Flak crowd. This was one of three obtainable silver badges I was still missing:

4

DJMcMayhem

:D

Glad to help!

Phoenix

@MartinEnder Hey, I have a brain-flak question too!

(And one more tomorrow)

Riley

7:09 PM

What else are you missing?

Martin Ender

Research Assistant and Archaeologist... those are both on me though :P

Wheat Wizard

Justin is currently the only one with research assistant

Phoenix

Which one is Archaeologist?

@MartinEnder I suppose you can make a bunch of trivial edits

Martin Ender

@WheatWizard I think he went out of his way to get it ;)

@Phoenix that would set a rather bad example, wouldn't it? ;)

Wheat Wizard

I don't think anyone is going to get that tenacious badge

DJMcMayhem

7:12 PM

I've got like 10 silver badges missing

Phoenix

It doesn't get pushed to active or anything like that

It doesn't actually harm anyone

Martin Ender

...and it wouldn't feel like I earned the badge.

DJMcMayhem

Hey, I'm 2/5th of the way to Epic. That's pretty cool

user165474

@Riker For the first one, I think that that's a reasonable restriction, though specify if you're going to do that.

user165474

For the second one, would False output [False, False, ..., False]?

ais523

7:15 PM

@MartinEnder on PPCG, Taxonomist should arguably be gold, it's pretty hard to get

whereas, say, Necromancer is really easy

I get a Necromancer badge basically every time I update the polyglot thread, despite the fact it's still active

Martin Ender

Necromancer is probably my most common badge on meta... haven't checked though.

ais523

(I guess SE assumed that a question that was created 60 days ago wouldn't be actively continuously receiving answers)

Martin Ender

But yeah I also regularly get them on main for the quine challenge or older "trivial" challenges with new languages.

Phoenix

My only gold badge is fanatic

user165474

I have no gold badges :( lol

user165474

7:17 PM

I'm 44/100 for Fanatic

user165474

And 39.5% on Electorate

Phoenix

@MartinEnder but do you have the mythical Tumbleweed badge?

DJMcMayhem

Is it sad if I've gotten fanatic 5 different times?

Phoenix

Wait, you can get fanatic multiple times?

DJMcMayhem

On 5 different sites I meant

PPCG, PPCG meta, SO, ELL, and Vi/Vim

Martin Ender

7:18 PM

@Phoenix I doubt it's possible these days, and it's a bit of an anti-badge anyway. (I don't have Peer Pressure either.)

ais523

I've been intentionally avoiding Fanatic

Phoenix

What?

Why?

ais523

I have a Fanatic progress display on my profile so that I can take a day off if it's getting too high

why? because I don't want it

New Main Posts

0

Q: Shortest possible XKCD password generator

The challenge: The shortest possible XKCD password generator. Example output: DevisesCreatorHideousTroops ShoutCasualPeanutLust RarerOceanAbnormalThou FiddleTreasureSkilledDishes BeardedPortraysChatVictory AidedFragmentSocketsLaughing LeakBricksWakeBlessed AmbientBeansBogging...

code-golf

ais523

I've never looked at the Tour page either, specifically because you get a badge for that

avoiding bronze badges is a pain

you get a ton of them no matter what you do

and, well, why is having a badge better than not having a badge?

they don't do anything

Martin Ender

7:20 PM

huh, turns out I have more Good Answers on meta than Necromancers. wouldn't have expected that considering the sandbox.

Phoenix

@MartinEnder Can I get peer pressure if I flag it for removal? (Can't delete questions with answers)

ais523

@MartinEnder the assumption on Tumbleweed is that answering questions is a benefit to the person who asked, and thus paying attention to the 0-voted questions that nobody else cares about is a useful service

this assumption doesn't hold for PPCG

the PPCG equivalent would be a badge for asking a highly voted unanswered question

user165474

I have 12/5 for Curious but apparently my question record is negative.

Martin Ender

@Phoenix I don't know

ais523

@MartinEnder getting a sandbox entry to +5 is really hard, a) people rarely vote on the sandbox, b) if the question is that good you're probably going to post it before the +5 threshold gets reached

Phoenix

7:22 PM

Do you mind if I try right now?

ais523

also I thought peer pressure was for answers

like, you post an answer, it gets downvoted, you delete it

I might have that badge? often on PPCG you have no idea whether an answer will get massively upvoted or massively downvoted until you post it

Martin Ender

@ais523 it works with questions too

Phoenix

> Delete own post with score of -3 or lower

I didn't realize it works for answers

Let me see if I have a negative answer

I do not

ais523

This answer is at +77/−1, but it really could have gone the other way

there's a comment at +14 that thinks it's invalid, but most of those users didn't downvote, likely because they're 101-rep users

user165474

I don't think I have had any answer downvotes yet. (I've had one but it got reverted after I actually bothered to golf my code)

ais523

7:25 PM

(this says a lot about Stack Exchange's voting system, really)

Riley

@ais523 Same for this answer at +93/-1.

Wheat Wizard

Online voting systems in general suck.

ais523

(also, about the "the implementation defines the language" rule, which makes the answer valid despite the fact that it really would be invalid in any sane ruleset)

@WheatWizard Slashdot's is the best I've seen, but it's still improvable

Phoenix

How does slashdot's work?

ais523

@Riley the only potential invalidation there is the program-or-function rule, surely? if you treat the I/O as valid, then it's a pretty simple use of a builtin

Geobits

7:27 PM

@HyperNeutrino So tempting...

user165474

no

user165474

plz

user165474

not like this.....

Riley

@ais523 You have to assume the output cell is the right format.

user165474

I don't want to get downvoted by a downvote button.

Riley

7:27 PM

Which it is by default. I think

Phoenix

Welp, time to downvote Geobits

Wheat Wizard

@Riley I'm going to give you the bounty now if thats ok. I really hate having blue boxes on my user profile.

ais523

@Phoenix once you've been on the site for several months, you gain voting points over time, faster if you have average activity and if voting review has determined your votes are normally accurate; once you have enough points, you get a week to cast those votes, and can't cast them on a discussion you've participated in; every vote has to specify a reason, from a short drop-down list (like close reasons on SE)

Riley

@WheatWizard Sounds good :)

Geobits

@Phoenix It would hardly be the first time :P

user165474

7:28 PM

I gained a total of 3 rep from this question at +5/-11 here :P

Riley

@WheatWizard I accidentally click them sometimes...

ais523

also a post can't get voted above +5 (barring bugs which the Slashdot developers refused to admit to when I reported them), and defaults to −1…+2 depending on how the user's posts have been received in the past

Phoenix

@ais523 Seems needlessly complivated

ais523

it's complicated, but probably not needlessly

it makes it quite hard to push an agenda

Wheat Wizard

Voting systems are hard, simple ones are never good

ais523

7:30 PM

@HyperNeutrino now you reminded me of that question, I'm tempted to downvote :-P

Phoenix

I'm not really buying the vote reasons

ais523

I don't think it breaks any rules or anything, I just really dislike it for some reason

Phoenix

I'm guessing most people just pick the top one in the drop down half the time

ais523

nah, because the thing is

there's a vote review

Wheat Wizard

Hey if you guys haven't seen Riley's Polyglot here you should check it out, it just won 300 rep for being the shortest Brian-Flak/Brain-Flueue polyglot, and believe me I tried my hardest to beat it. (And its also really cool)

ais523

7:31 PM

and if the review says there's no reason behind your votes, you get votes less often in the future

the review picks votes at random, and you don't get to know who cast them

Phoenix

I see.

ais523

anyway, part of the reason I like it is because it actually does help get the best posts to the top (i.e. +5)

SE's system doesn't; a moderately good post at +30 is likely to stay above a very good post at +10 for a very long time

because people who upvote the second post are likely to upvote the first post too

Wheat Wizard

Sort by activity should really be the default for everyone

ais523

(that's in terms of answers; the situation with questions is even harder)

or sort by random, perhaps

user165474

I agree that sort by vote is bad because then the top-voted answers keep getting upvoted.

Phoenix

7:33 PM

Sort by random wouldn't make sense on every other SE site, where people are trying to get actual help

ais523

even then it'd make sense for voting

you'd present the answers in vote order by default, but require the sort order to be changed before you could vote

either that, or have separate ways to nominate "helpful answer" and "best answer"

Wheat Wizard

IMO You shouldn't be able to vote if you are currently ordering by votes.

Phoenix

Makes sense

ais523

(and not the accepted answer tick, that's for the question asker and is often given to an early answer because that resolved the problem sufficiently)

Phoenix

Right, green tick shouldn't be top.

Dennis

7:35 PM

@WheatWizard That would simply result in people not voting. However, if there is no way to sort by votes...

ais523

anyway, I believe the problem of working out the best answer is actually mathematically unsolvable

Martin Ender

23

Q: Could PPCG benefit from a new sorting mode for answers?

The default sorting for answers (by votes) seems somewhat inappropriate here on PPCG. In any case it tends to put early answers over late answers, because once a few are there, few people scroll to the bottom to see newer answers and even fewer people sort by activity. If you consider that bette...

discussion feature-request answers votes

ais523

@Dennis we need a sort by votes for popcons

and I also find viewing the answers in vote order interesting sometimes (it's also useful to know what sort of content people like, so that I can try to post more of it)

Wheat Wizard

@Dennis I'd happily take less votes if my votes were awarded more fairly

ais523

yes, it's so demoralizing when answers you put a lot of effort into don't get upvoted and answers you just threw off in a few seconds don't

Wheat Wizard

7:37 PM

Currntly my top answer is a shitty FGITW I did for a pretty trivial challenge

Geobits

@MartinEnder Well you can see my stance on that there. It hasn't softened all that much :P

ais523

this question is one of the most interesting for looking at voting patterns, IMO

user165474

I wrote an answer once where it took me longer to click "Add Answer" and type it in than to think of it, and it's my most upvoted answer.

user165474

I have a Java answer that I'm quite proud of that has 0 upvotes. Actually, I have several such answers, back when I still used Java on this site.

user165474

Now I just use Python, and I'm going to start using Jelly on this site as well. :P

ais523

7:40 PM

note that the top answer is incredibly lazy, that the highest-voted things on the page are the question itself and Dennis' comment that the top answer is incredibly lazy (Dennis' comment is higher-voted than every answer), and that a relatively late answer is currently in #4

further down, #6 is a Retina answer at +18, that has a considerably worse objective score than the Retina answer at +6 (which came somewhat later)

Wheat Wizard

@ais523 Unary is not the top answer its just pinned

ais523

there are also invalid answers that are voted fairly high

Wheat Wizard

The Haskell answer has more votes

ais523

oh right, it's the #2 answer

Wheat Wizard

You should flag invalid answers

ais523

7:42 PM

I did, but earlier today

when a) it looked like it wasn't going to get fixed any time soon and b) I remembered it existed

Poke

@HyperNeutrino which one

Geobits

> A simpler explanation to explain FGITW could be that early answers get more page views, so have a better chance of getting an upvote. Even if every user scrolls to see every answer on every question, the early ones still get seen more.

ais523

what you could do is compare the upvote rate of new answers to that of old answers, while both are posted

Poke

If we wanted to enforce deadlines on challenges there could be an argument for hiding answers for a set period of time

before allowing people to vote

ais523

Reddit has apparently discovered a trend where having a higher displayed score makes people more likely to upvote a post, regardless of sort order

Geobits

7:45 PM

@ais523 I'm still not sure that's a fair measure. Most people probably look at the question more often when it's new (especially if it HNQs), so adding an answer later would still be less overall attention.

ais523

and has started hiding score for the first few hours after a post is posted in order to reduce the effect

Geobits

Now hiding the score for a bit sounds like a good idea either way.

ais523

@Geobits well, if a good late answer can overtake an average early answer, I'd say the system is working

the posts can still be sorted in vote order, though; it's just that the scores don't display

Wheat Wizard

I'm not even sure why we can see scores at all

Dennis

@ais523 We don't. We also don't need sort-by-length if you ask me.

Geobits

7:47 PM

@WheatWizard Because gamification

Wheat Wizard

seems like it should be a privilege if anything

Geobits

SE wants people to be engaged, and there's no method better than fake points everyone can see. There really isn't.

ais523

@Dennis I mean, simply to determine who's winning

although hmm

Wheat Wizard

@Geobits That is true

Geobits

It's the same reason old arcade games let you put in your initials for the high score :P

ais523

7:48 PM

are popcons a competition-per-language in the same way that golf is meant to be?

with a popcon it's hard to see it as anything other than just one big competition, but maybe it isn't

Dennis

Popcons aren't a competition at all if you ask me...

ais523

like, can you compete to be the most popular with a different algorithm?

@Dennis well, it has "competition" in the name of the tag, and all non-tips non-showcase posts are meant to be competitions here

Poke

can we leave popcons out of this discussion? It's just going to turn into the normal popcon-a-roo

Geobits

Popcons are a competition focused on how well you can present your post imo. The code barely matters in most cases.

ais523

you can certainly argue that popcons shouldn't exist at all; that's something that PCPG will likely never agree on

Geobits

7:49 PM

You need pretty pictures, some writing ability, etc...

Dennis

Seeing how broken the voting patterns in all other competitions are, scoring a competition by upvotes is only marginally better than picking the winner at random...

3

ais523

but under the assumption that they exist, it's hard to see how they're anything other than a single big competition for votes

Poke

this is why i don't accept answers on challenges

Geobits

I still get votes every few days on years-old popcons that aren't very good.

ais523

oh, I don't accept answers because a) you can't accept multiple answers, meaning you stifle people's attempts to improve once there's a tick on the answer; b) it screws with sort order, which is relevant in answer-chaining

I will say that the existence of popcons is how I found out about PPCG in the first place

Geobits

7:51 PM

@ais523 Me too

ais523

I believe this is the first PPCG post I saw

Geobits

Ha, that was my first answered.

ais523

meanwhile, this post is the one that convinced me that the site was the sort of site I wanted; it's answer-chaining, not popularity-contest

Dennis

@ais523 Many have. I learned about PPCG through code trolling, the arguably worst kind of popcon. Unsurprisingly, popcons are popular.

Poke

@ais523 me too

ais523

7:53 PM

btw, I really like the collaborative challenges

competitive challenges are in the spirit of "friendly competition" for me, i.e. the competition exists to push you to do better

but one person often can't do as much as everyone together

this is how the idea for the polyglot challenge came about

Poke

this challenge is probably my favorite on the site

ais523

at this point, I'm not sure anyone who's still left in even cares about the victory condition, I just put it there to prevent the challenge being closed

we're all just trying to keep the challenge going as long as possible

and produce the best polyglot ever (which we've probably already accomplished, to be fair, but you can always do better)

New Main Posts

3

Q: Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare

Recently, I've seen Hare Krishna people with their mantra on the emblem and I've found it may be a quite interesting to code golf it. The challenge Write the Hare Krishna mantra, i.e.: Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare Winning criteri...

code-golf string

ais523

come to think of it, the postdates-the-challenge rule means that there must be a hard limit to how big it can get, but it's a limit we're unlikely to get near

Wheat Wizard

Does anyone script in Fish?

TuxCopter

8:05 PM

1.1 + 0.1
 1.2000000000000002

js pls

Martin Ender

this is not JS's fault. that's how floating-point numbers work.

Jan Dvorak

possible duplicate of: is floating point math broken?

irb(main):002:0> "0.1".to_r + "1.1".to_r
=> (6/5)

AKA 0.1r + 1.1r

Ruby has literals for complex numbers, too :-D

Luis Mendo

8:20 PM

@LeakyNun I am new here, but are you always this hostile? It's not like there are ton of unique ways to approach this. Even if he did port it, he still has the shorter answer. — Grayson Kent 5 hours ago

I agree @LeakyNun often comes across as hostile. I like to think it's a cultural thing. I'm pretty sure it's not on purpose.

@GraysonKent I apologize for my perceived hostility. — Leaky Nun 3 hours ago

New Main Posts

-1

Q: How do you correctly use CSS animation delays to create a collapsible HTML container?

I am attempting to use CSS animation delays to make a accordion type of action happen when a user clicks on a arrow connected to a table without Javascript and only HTML/CSS. Seen here when you resize the screen to mobile: http://responsiveemailpatterns.com/patterns/accordions/full-to-accordion...

css

Anonymous

@LuisMendo He's very direct. Some people don't like it when people cut to the chase. Honestly, I find it refreshing, after dealing with clients all day who don't know what they want.

user165474

@Poke I was particularly proud of the bytewise operations thingy.

user165474

I can see how some people see Leaky Nun as kind of hostile. Personally, I don't find him (assuming gender from profile picture) to be very hostile, but I became active only a bit before he went on leave for exams, and I've gotten used to people being very direct with me (from Cadets)

mbomb007

@programmer5000 Stop deleting the content of people's answers in the Sandbox if the answers haven't been posted/deleted yet.

5

example

The OP says he's still waiting for votes, but you already deleted the content of the post.

Anonymous

8:35 PM

That's straight-up vandalism

Nathan Merrill

any Lua programmers here?

mbomb007

@Mego another example

Martin Ender

@NathanMerrill not really, but I read the Lua book once and used it a little bit. depending on the complexity of your question I might remember something :P

Luis Mendo

@Mego If you ask me, you also come up as a little hostile sometimes. Not as much as Leaky, though. (And I'm not saying it's a bad thing). So that may explain you like it in others too :-)

mbomb007

@WheatWizard You should delete this sandbox post that is now on main

Nathan Merrill

8:42 PM

repl.it/H5Bj/2

Geobits

@NathanMerrill I've used lua-based languages and frameworks, but not usually straight lua.

Nathan Merrill

I can't figure out why this __tostring() method doesn't work

maybe its super obvious, but I'm guessing it has to do with lua internals or something

Wheat Wizard

@mbomb007 Thanks, I probably have some more I've forgotten about

user165474

Does anyone know who user00001 is? The profile picture reminds me of ThisGuy.

Poke

@HyperNeutrino You have a link? You said you were proud of it so I want to look at it

user165474

8:46 PM

Oh wait, never mind, I must have been thinking of another answer because this one has +6/-0: here

Riker

@HyperNeutrino yes

@HyperNeutrino so I can assume that it will be shorter than 1k?

user165474

Yes.

Riker

cool, thanks

Martin Ender

@NathanMerrill seems to be a problem with repl.it: tio.run/nexus/…

ATaco

The v in that is redundant, also, I think it's a problem with the implementation of Repl.it

mbomb007

9:02 PM

@HyperNeutrino I can't find ThisGuy under users. Maybe he changed his name.

Riker

he changed his name yes

he's user0001 iirc, and suspended

Nathan Merrill

@MartinEnder huh

well, thanks

user165474

I think it's been changed to Soyoucanreplytomeinthecomments but his account is suspended up until 05-15

Riker

soyoucanreplytomeincomments is no longer a user

@HyperNeutrino yea, user00001 is definitely thisguy. found a comment reply with his old name

user165474

Okay.

user165474

9:10 PM

Yeah.

New Main Posts

9:27 PM

0

Q: Machine learning optimization. Grid search vs Gradient descent

I wanted to know when is grid search optimization used to find hyper parameters over gradient descent. In my perspective, gradient descent is well suited if the problem is convex where as grid search restricts values to be discrete and can be used for any problems. It is not necessary for the p...

optimization

user165474

@NewMainPosts Hyper Parameters Hi Hyper Parameters! I'm Hyper Neutrino! :D

Thomas Ward

~~explodes~~ Greetings TNB

DJMcMayhem

o/

user165474

o/

Nathan Merrill

@MartinEnder why is Generalist so hard to get?

Martin Ender

9:43 PM

@NathanMerrill it's not unlocked yet. Otherwise some users would already have it

Phoenix

What's generalist

fəˈnɛtɪk

score of 15+ on 20+ of the top 40 tags

ais523

10:11 PM

ugh, why does SE not notify you about unupvotes

I like to keep track of how my posts are doing

and the only explanation for the rep changes I'm seeing is that a post I posted in the last few hours got unupvoted, but I don't think there's any way to figure out which one other than memorizing the scores they previously had, and it's kind-of frustrating that that information isn't available

Jan Dvorak

Just assume the upvote never happened

ATaco

11:01 PM

Alright, I'm going to change the scoring for TeamSpirit slightly to make it more consistent across clients.

Phoenix

The bar on the bottom queries the current star distribution?

Howcome everyone on thestarboard appears blue?

ATaco

I see many reds on the starboard myself, Such as Dennis and mbomb, it's just that blues have 27 stars in the top two alone.

I've updated TeamSpirit to only use the starboard, instead of messages.

This is because the starboard consistently loads 10 messages, regardless of if you can see them.

Phoenix

I know mbomb has a red star, but his name appears blue

ATaco

(All names appear blue, they're just links)

That's just how the starboard looks.

Phoenix

Oooooh

I guess I didn't notice before

New Main Posts

11:27 PM

0

Q: Test if a string can be made with substrings!

Given a string s and an array/list l, determine whether or not s can be made with parts from l. For example, if the string is "Hello, world!" and the list is [' world!', 'Hello,'], then the program/function should return a truthy value, because you can arrange the list to form the string. The fo...

code-golf string subsequence

0

Q: Print all decimals

You must write a program or function that will output all decimals with the specified precision if run forever. Example: Input: 2 Output: 0.01, -0.01, 0.02, -0.02, 0.03, -0.03... The input is the number of decimal places to print. The output is all the numbers with the specified decimal pr...

code-golf number floating-point

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