Custom Search

one-liner wars

[prev][up][next]
one-liner wars: n. A game popular among hackers who code in the language APL (see write-only language and line noise). The objective is to see who can code the most interesting and/or useful routine in one line of operators chosen from APL's exceedingly hairy primitive set. A similar amusement was practiced among TECO hackers and is now popular among Perl aficionados.

Ken Iverson, the inventor of APL, has been credited with a one-liner that, given a number N, produces a list of the prime numbers from 1 to N inclusive. It looks like this:

(2 = 0 +.= T o.| T) / T <- iN

where `o' is the APL null character, the assignment arrow is a single character, and `i' represents the APL iota.

Here's a Perl program that prints primes: 

             perl -le '$_ = 1; (1 x $_) !~ /^(11+)\1+$/ && print while $_++'

[prev][up][next] 12 hits in May 2012
mes@science.uva.nl