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Perl Programming

Quadrilingual Crazy Programming 196

Posted by timothy from the esperonto-has-nothing-on-this dept.
mtve writes: "Have you ever seen source code that is valid on four languages: Perl, C, Befunge, and BrainF*ck? During last Perlgolf season famous Perl hacker Jérôme Quelin submit such inconceivable masterpiece and now he published expanded explanation of his solution. Caution: that text can hurt your mental health. Play Perlgolf!"
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Quadrilingual Crazy Programming More

Quadrilingual Crazy Programming

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  • Not for me... (Score:5, Funny)

    by PepsiProgrammer ( 545828 ) on Saturday May 11, 2002 @09:07PM (#3504140)
    I have enough trouble making my code compile in ONE language, 4 at the same time is a bit much

  • omg... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Danse ( 1026 ) on Saturday May 11, 2002 @09:12PM (#3504156)

    He should seek professional help. Soon. That's right up there with self-mutilation.

    • That's right up there with self-mutilation.

      Not nearly as much fun though.

    • Re:omg... (Score:4, Funny)

      by SkulkCU ( 137480 ) on Saturday May 11, 2002 @09:28PM (#3504215) Homepage Journal

      He should seek professional help. Soon.

      at the bottom of the page:

      the referees were so impressed by my efforts (one of them told me that I deserve a book. And a straightjacket. And a padded room [...] they decided to grant me a book for my efforts.
    • He should seek professional help. Soon. That's right up there with self-mutilation.
      The first thought that jumped to my mind was "can I add Generic Pre-Processor to the list of languages this works in?". I'm drawn to this task like a fly into a zapper. Please, someone write a +5 insightful essay about why I shouldn't do this...before it's too late.

  • Wow, but slight dilemma (Score:4, Funny)

    by lkaos ( 187507 ) <anthony@NOspaM.codemonkey.ws> on Saturday May 11, 2002 @09:13PM (#3504164) Homepage Journal
    Now this is exactly why I am proud to be a programmer. Screw Picaso and DaVinci, this is what real art is all about.

    This presents an interesting dilemma though. What Emacs mode do I use to look at the code??? perl-mode, c-mode, I dunno. Fontifying just complicates it even more.

    At any rate, this shit is going up in my cube. If they should this in a frame, I would buy it and hang it in my house.

    • If you rename the file to quadlang.c or quadlang.cpp, then open it as c/c++. If you rename it to quadland.cgi, open it as perl, and so on. That's assuming you're going to rename it before sending it to any compiler.

      Of course, that's just another problem with multiple languages per source file - figuring precisely how to name the file.

      :^)

      Ryan Fenton
    • Name the file "insane.program", and make symbolic links to it with the various extensions. Then emacs will automatically use the right mode.
    • What Emacs mode do I use to look at the code???

      No problem, just use vi(m)! In vim, you can use several colour-coding styles in one document. Just needs a bit of tweaking, that's all.

  • "Polyglot" did that 10 years ago! (Score:4, Informative)

    by Lardmonster ( 302990 ) on Saturday May 11, 2002 @09:14PM (#3504167)
    http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/user/chogan/Web/pol yglot

    Cobol, Pascal, Fortran, C, Postscript, shellscript, 8086
    • Yo, the link doesn't work. I would be curious to see your decalingual program, can you fix it? deca=ten??
    • OK, so it actualy prints "hello polyglots", but still, all it does is output a fixed string. Quelin's program does an actual computation, admittedly a relatively minor one.

      Moreover, all of polyglot's languages are languages that people have actually used to write real code. I'm not saying they are all reasonable languages, but one can at least semi-plausibly claim that they were written to be useful. Befunge and BrainF*ck are both toy languages written expressly to be perverse in some way (Befunge to be uncompilable, and BrainF*ck to be absurdly minimalist.)

      That said, I was disappointed at how separate the languages' code blocks were in Quilen's program. C and perl share most of the same code, but there are three completely separate code blocks and the work is mostly in getting each language to ignore the others' code. It's probably the only way it can be done, but it's really a short quadralingual wrapper around three separate programs, one of which is bilingual.
    • No. No, no. These people should have been shot. THIS IS NOT NORMAL! Go find a shrink!

      On the other hand, it's really, really cool.. How about a contest? Write a program that does a particular thing (dunno, calculate something (like Pi)), and should be compilable/runnable in a lot of languages. You get points from a jury from how good the program solved the task, times number of languages it is written in. Could be quite fun. (-8
  • The whole purpose behind having so many languages is for different specialized needs. There used to be PASCAL for scientists, FORTRAN for mathematicians, BASIC for hobbyists or new programmers... each server a purpose, and was not made to do anything more.
    Nowadays, Perl and PHP are almost identical, Obj C, C, and C++ are very similar, Java bears many similarities to Obj C and C++ as well, and most of the new 'Basic' environments like REALBasic and VisualBasic are near clones as well.
    All of today's popular coding environments could be condensed to Java, Objective C, Perl, and some form of BASIC. This point is exemplified nicely by the fact that a bit of code can be done to compile in 4 languages... the syntax is already quite close, having so many minor variants is just messy.
    • interesting Freudian Slip,
      each server
      Either that, or its a typo...
    • Have you read the article?

      This is an excerpt of the Befunge part:
      > 2ep 1ep :0ep :0fp '0+, v > 2eg 1- : 2ep !#v_ 4eg : fg 1- \ fp 4eg fg #v _ 3eg ! 3ep 4eg 1+ 4ep v
      v pe30 < a

      And this is an excerpt of the BrainF*ck part (a language with 8 instructions):
      >+>+<<<<<-]>>,--------- ---

      And keep in mind that the actual program is much longer than that.

      I wish I could include more, but the lameness filter won't allow me to...

      So much for nearly identical languages...
      • Have you read the article?

        [parent's parent] All of today's popular coding environments could be condensed to...

        BrainFuck and Befunge are designed to be different, and more importantly, unintelligable. There are a million different languages out there (for example, Lisp looks nothing like Java) but the popular ones (not counting Lisp) all stem from either C or Basic.
    • Perl and PHP is different. Sure they may have that dollar sign as variables, and they have C style flow control, but that's where the similarity ends.

      PHP borrows its syntax from various other languages, including Perl, but also C, Java, Javascript, etc

    • Re:Shouldn't this tell us something? (Score:5, Informative)

      by joto ( 134244 ) on Saturday May 11, 2002 @10:45PM (#3504372)
      This must be some of the worst bullshit I've heard about programming languages in quite some time.

      Did you even read the article. I'll challenge you to find languages with much more different syntax from C/Perl than Befunge-98 and Brainfuck!

      There used to be PASCAL for scientists, FORTRAN for mathematicians, BASIC for hobbyists or new programmers...

      Actually, Pascal was for education, (and systems-programming (once you added some much-needed non-standard extensions)). Fortran was for scientists (mathmaticians would probably be happier with Lisp, or something like Mathematica, only scientists needs actual numbers).

      Obj C, C, and C++ are very similar

      No, they are not. Well, ObjC and C are the most similar of the three, but modern C++ has little in common with idiomatic C. Java looks very similar to Objective C (which pretty much tells you how different C and Objective C are).

      ...and most of the new 'Basic' environments like REALBasic and VisualBasic are near clones as well.

      Maybe. My experience with VB didn't leave me thinking it was anything close to Java (or any other of the above mentioned languages). However, VB.NET is supposed to be so.

      All of today's popular coding environments could be condensed to Java, Objective C, Perl, and some form of BASIC.

      Well, if by popularity, you mean lots of users, or lots of jobs available, I am very confused why Objective C is on the list (although OS X should give it a boost). On the other hand, if you mean liked by it's users, you will hardly find any language not fitting that description. By any account, you need C++ on the list.

      But yes, I agree that such a list can be made, and mine would be: C, C++, Java, VB, Perl, COBOL, PL/SQL, HTML/XML, ASP/JSP/PHP, SAS, Python, Matlab, Fortran, Common Lisp, mostly in that order, but maybe COBOL even more to the front of the list.

      Anyway, there is no way to avoid C, C++ and or Java on the top of the list. (Which maybe was your point, but anyone taking more than a cursory glance at those languages will find that they are in fact very different from each other. They look similar on the surface, but are just as different as Pascal, Fortran and Basic).

      • My experience with VB didn't leave me thinking it was anything close to Java

        The impression I got from VB was that it was sort of a bastardized combination of HyperCard, JavaScript and Q-BASIC all wrapped into one - the GUI concepts from HyperCard, the concept of objects and properties from JavaScript, and the syntax and vocabulary from Q-BASIC.

        Note that the HyperTalk language is actually designed to be used in that kind of GUI environment, and is probably the highest-level language I've ever heard of (that's not to say it doesn't have shortcomings, like the lack of intangible objects, the awkwardness of storing arrays as text, inability to handle strings over 32k or containing nulls, and other issues I've forgotten about). Q-BASIC is absolutely not designed for this sort of thing at all, and is really not appropriate for working with objects. And JavaScript is a PITA all the way around.
      • Did you even read the article. I'll challenge you to find languages with much more different syntax from C/Perl than Befunge-98 and Brainfuck!

        Malbolge. See these notes on writing hello, world in malbolge [acooke.org]:

        this malbolge program generates:

        HEllO WORld

        it's not perfect - i ignored case to make the problem simpler (completion left as an exercise for the reader - it should be possible).

        when i finally got a decent algorithm worked out (i've been playing around with this for the best part of a month - see below), it took a few hours to generate the program on a 500mhz nt box with 96mb memory (the code was written in lisp - i started with clisp on suse linux and then changed to corman lisp on nt) (more numbers here).

        incidentally, i've come to hate malbolge.

      • But yes, I agree that such a list can be made, and mine would be: C, C++, Java, VB, Perl, COBOL, PL/SQL, HTML/XML, ASP/JSP/PHP, SAS, Python, Matlab, Fortran, Common Lisp, mostly in that order, but maybe COBOL even more to the front of the list.

        Functional languages are sorely under-represented in your list. It ought to include at least some dialect of ML (SML or O'Caml) and at least one pure functional language (e.g. Haskell). Really, though, it is a silly academic exercise to try to form a list that comprehensively includes every ``useful'' language, as definitions of useful vary widely. (In fact, that's why there are so many languages in the first place, and in some sense, why it's justifiable to have so many languages.)

        Case in point: your list leans heavily towards the imperative and object-oriented styles of programming (C, C++, Java, COBOL, Perl, Python, Fortran), and also towards web technologies and scripting languages (HTML/XML, ASP/JSP/PHP (which are really three different things anyhow), Perl, Python, Java (arguably)). (It's also arguable that you include some languages which are decidedly less useful -- e.g. VB, SAS -- but i only mention that to point out that these things are all a matter of taste; let's not get into a holy war on everyone's favorite programming language! :)

        • Yup, that is true. And it was intended. Functional languages are also sorely underrepresented in the real world. Luckily, I don't have too much experience with it (the real world), but it seems like they use the weirdest, clunkiest, and most inelegant languages there (VB being one of the nicer, in fact).

          Also, web-technologies are important in the real-world. To the point where I am almost surely convinced that one day, 90% of us will all work on web-infrastructure for each other, while the remaining 10% will take care of the rest of society.

          Also, I was not trying to put together a list of useful languages. If a was, then my list would look entirely different. I was trying to list "popular" languages, for a suitable definition of "popular". I am very aware of the fact that just because something is "popular" and "much used" doesn't make it useful. And I am aware of functional languages, and do consider some of them to be useful. That doesn't make them "popular" though.

          It might be that I was trying too much to remove my own bias from academia, and smart, well-educated programmers, but I don't really think so. Much of the real world revolves around the silliest programming languages.

    • But then BF is sort of an anomaly among computer languages.

  • Obligatory polyglot programming link (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 11, 2002 @09:17PM (#3504184)
    The only polyglot archive i am aware of on the whole internet [nyx.net]

    Everything2 entry on polyglots [everything2.com]

  • How about 7 languages? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Zifter ( 15237 ) on Saturday May 11, 2002 @09:20PM (#3504194)
    What about the famous Polyglot [mcc.ac.uk]?

    It runs/compiles under 7 languages: ANSI COBOL, ISO Pascal, ANSI Fortran, ANSI C, PostScript, Shell Script, and 8086 machine language!!! Check it out, it rocks.

  • Code includes preprocessor directives (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Sancho ( 17056 ) on Saturday May 11, 2002 @09:23PM (#3504202) Homepage
    He uses the fact that # is a comment in Perl VERY frequently to use #defines etc that will allow C to act like Perl. Interesting solution, although I question whether the use of such preprocessor directives REALLY counts as making cross-compatible code. Then again, I nitpick the difference between preprocessor and compiler, so...

  • Portable (Score:2, Funny)

    by Myshkin ( 34701 )
    Well, I guess that is one way to keep people from saying that your implementation isn't portable enough.

  • simpler version (Score:4, Funny)

    by damiam ( 409504 ) on Saturday May 11, 2002 @09:24PM (#3504205)
    This program is valid in C, C++, python, perl, basic, and a few other languages, and it also accomplishes the rare feat of printing its own source code without reading from a file:





    Note that, even though this is standard C, gcc won't compile it, complaining about the lack of a "main" function.

  • It's neat, but... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by meta-monkey ( 321000 ) on Saturday May 11, 2002 @09:26PM (#3504209) Journal
    First off, this guy obviously has much better kung-fu than I do...I've never even heard of BrainFuck or Befunge...but I think he kinda cheated on the last two languages. He just hid the code for Brainfuck and Befunge in perl and C comments, so they wouldn't interfere with each other. Now, the perl/C part is really neat, because he used C #defines to translate various Perl characters into C, so the Perl interpreter and C compiler are reading and understanding the exact same code...that's cool. But the B & B code just gets ignored by the Perl interpreter and C compiler because of comments, so this amounts to writing 3 seperate programs (one in BrainFuck, one in Befunge, and one that's bi in C and Perl) and then putting them all in the same file with intstructions as to which compiler/interpreter reads which part, as opposed to writing one piece of code that's meaningful in all 4 languages. I'd call this bilingual, not quadlingual.
    • I see your point, but if you read through the entire explanation he talks about the problems with the embedding of the befunge and brainfuck scripts.

      #include can't be used because i is a valid instruction, so you have to use #undef. The reason why this is quadlingual is because you are able to run it through any of the 4 compilers/interpreters and get the same result. I could see the Perl and C working together without much difficulty, but when I read Brainfuck I was completely stumped how he would manage to do that. I think it's a very elegant solution. If by elegance, I mean insane and beautiful in a sick and twisted way. Just because the code gets ignored by the C/Perl interpreter doesn't make it any less bilingual. The code also gets ignored by the aidbf and b98 interpreters as well.

  • Too Bad... (Score:5, Funny)

    by susano_otter ( 123650 ) on Saturday May 11, 2002 @09:28PM (#3504212) Homepage
    Have you ever seen source code that is valid on four languages: Perl, C, Befunge, and BrainF*ck? During last Perlgolf season famous Perl hacker Jérôme Quelin submit such inconceivable masterpiece and now he published expanded explanation of his solution. Caution: that text can hurt your mental health.

    Ironically, the article isn't even valid in one language.

  • Yeah, it's great to have a piece of code that compiles for four languages, but what's the point if you're just using pre-processor and compiler tricks to get the compiler to look at a different section of the same file? In this file, if I change the problem-solving logic slightly, I have to change it in several places. What would be truly cool (and incredibly difficult), in my opinion, would be to completely eliminate redundant logic.
    • In this file, if I change the problem-solving logic slightly, I have to change it in several places. What would be truly cool (and incredibly difficult), in my opinion, would be to completely eliminate redundant logic.

      What?!? Eliminate redundant logic? That would put microsoft out of business!
      MacOS ~ Windows
      Java ~ C#
      Diablo ~ Dungeon Siege
      • While funny, I gotta call you on that last one. If games with similar premises/engines were not out there, the market would be incredibly smaller. For example, we'd only have Doom.....Ok, so we allow upgrades. We'd have Q3. We'd never have gotten the beauty that is halflife :)
    • Okay, I agree with you, eliminating redundant parts would be cool, but where do you draw the line? I mean, #defines will only get you so far. Are you suggesting that one attempt to restrict themself to languages that map more easily to one another? Or are you instead suggesting a more obtuse approach, like writing an interpreter in each language, and then using that to run an inlined copy of the actual program? (The inlined program being written in yet another language, of course.)

      My point? Just because you've seen the slight of hand behind the magic doesn't make the feat any less impressive. I mean seriously, how'd you expect him to accomplish this? : )

  • Befunge? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Quixote ( 154172 ) on Saturday May 11, 2002 @09:32PM (#3504219) Homepage Journal
    From the article (yes, I read it, and yes, my jaw won't close now):
    Befunge is, ... a topological language on a 2D cartesian Lahey space.

    Holy mackerel! I am in love. I've found the object of my dreams.

    • Holy mackerel! I am in love. I've found the object of my dreams.

      "Hol[e]y rusted metal, Batman!"

      Yes, I'm offtopic again. Mod me down.

      Actually, Befunge looks like a lot more work than traditional procedural languages. What actual benefits does it offer? (Apart from "I can think in a language that causes your brain pain!")

  • Multilingual is the norm... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by KFury ( 19522 ) on Saturday May 11, 2002 @09:33PM (#3504225) Homepage
    ...on th web, anyhow. All the time we deal with several languages, burying one inside another so they'll make sense as they go through successive levels of parsing.

    For example, every day I write SQL that is buried in PHP libraries which extracts more PHP that in turn has HTML and Javascript in them.

    For another example of the crazyness, check this simple example [fury.com]. Now if you look at the source, you'll notice the end part of that A-tag was: .');"> For those of you who are counting, that's SIX 'enders' in three syntax languages just to form a simple alert box.

    . - English syntax
    ' - Javascript string syntax
    ) - Javascript function syntax
    ; - Javascript instruction syntax
    " - HTML attribute syntax
    > - XML (err, HTML, whichever) tag syntax

    And that's not even a particularly hairy example. That's just client-side and wetware-side parsing.
    • Yeah, I wrote some Perl code that uses a database to print out HTML containing JavaScript that uses some of the information in the database to dynamically set certain form values according to the values of other form elements. In other words, dynamically-generated JavaScript that dynamically generates HTML. Debugging that was hell. I feel your pain.
      • I think web programming for B-to-B and intranets needs an overhaul. We need an HTTP-friendly GUI protocol (like SCGUI, plug plug).

        HTML+DOM+JS is great for e-brochures, but crappy and messy for complex business forms.

        Even if you don't like SCGUI, at least promote something along the same lines. Trying to make web pages act like VB/Delphi/Powerbuilder is a royal micromanaging pain that is almost as as much joy as using Brianf*ck.

        BTW, if you use ColdFusion, it has two language modes/syntaxes. Thus, you may end up using Coldfusion 1, Coldfusion 2, SQL, HTML, and JavaScript. 5 languages to get the job done.
  • Wow, if I saw that a few years ago, I would've been so scared I would've never touched another programming language again! Slashdot, please think of the children before you post things like that.
    • Damn, inverse for me. The first code I looked at from other people was the obfuscated code.

      Just seeing people do some beautiful and crazy twists of logic inspired me on so many levels. I still remember the first piece of obfuscated code I got my hands on was this great Hello World program. Another one was a console animation that displayed an ASCII movie of a McDonalds delivery truck running a cow over then throwing the carcass into the back of the truck and driving off.

      Sadly enough, those two programs inspired me to code more than anything to date. More sad, I've never entered an obfuscated code contest. I find myself more intruiged by finding elegant twists of logic that look pretty, and functional :)
  • Now if only he could come up with an version that did APL, too.

  • I multi-program.... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by xtremex ( 130532 )
    When I get into my "programming language learning" mode, when I learn a new procedure in one language, I try to make the same program in at leats 7 others....sure, it sounds lame, but it really sticks in my head..

  • just curious (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Permission Denied ( 551645 ) on Saturday May 11, 2002 @10:05PM (#3504283) Journal
    #define ARGV argv

    Why not just do this instead:

    main (int argc, char *ARGV[])

    Also, another minor quip: the C program is not valid C in either C89 or C99. It's not valid C89 because it uses '//' for a comment, and it's not valid C99 since it introduces main() without declaring the return type. C89 defaults to int if you don't declare the type (both for functions and variables, which can be fun), whereas this behaviour is undefined in C99. Normally, I don't follow the anal-retentive lingual purists, but I think this situation calls for this.

    But yeah, this is pretty cool.

    • Yeah, many people don't think about that. When I write C code I always write:

      main (int ac, char *av[])
      Some weird habit I picked up but it drives people nuts.. "hey, is that legal in C?", etc.
      • My biggest pet peeve of all:
        int main( int argc, char** argv);

        My first CS teacher did that, and I objected and had to pull the reference. I see char** argv all the time, and can never figure out why it bothers me but it does. It's similar to misspelling definately[sic] -- no reason, just irritating.
  • 5 languages...I'll bet they forgot to count C++

  • This article is a gem. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by theolein ( 316044 ) on Saturday May 11, 2002 @10:35PM (#3504343) Journal
    I sort of think it's things like this that make slashdot so worth reading. These gems of pure geekness. +5 to /.

    I discovered BrainFuck by chance two years ago and immediately got lost in two nights of trying to get my first quine to compile in the interactive JavaScript BF interpreter. For some perverse reason it is fun. It brings out the little boy in me who used to build model airplanes out of toothpicks: Little unimportant things that become something when you stick them together. perhaps this would also be a possible real world language for programming Nanobots, whose processors wouldn't yet cope with a P4 strapped to their backs.
    • Can you seriously imagine on the Nightly News them doing a story about how BrainFuck programmed NanoBots kill AIDS cells, and kill off tumors?

      News Reporter: So how'd you do it?
      Guy: Well, the nanotech was already there. I just wrote a small program in BrainFuck in order to hunt down the virus.

      Well, at least censorship would go out the window the same time we cure World Disease.

  • 4 Languages? Whoopty doo. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Clay Mitchell ( 43630 ) on Saturday May 11, 2002 @11:13PM (#3504432) Homepage
    Try to get a website to look the same in every web browser.

    That's an impressive feat?

    Netscape 4.X = Worst browser ever!
    • Netscape 4 rules! I am writing cross-browser dhtml, and ns 4 has one thing going it for it: it is fast! IE in any version has fewer bugs, and is fast enough. But NS 6.2 is THE WORST. It has so many bugs coding for it is like walking through a mine-field. And, to top that off, its 10 times slower at many DHTML tasks than version 4 was.
    • Exactly! Just try writing cross-platform JavaScript! There seems to be little pattern to which browsers support window.innerWidth vs. which support document.body.clientWidth, and since the alternative browsers usually munge their USER_AGENT strings you can't rely on that to be meaningful. Sure, you can support Netscape and MSIE, but can you tell me which one of those properties will work and which one will abort with an error in Opera, iCab, OmniWeb and Konqueror? I wound up with this, which I think seems to work universally, mostly, kinda:

      if(!isNaN(parseInt(window.innerWidth))) {
      pageWidth=parseInt(window.innerWidth);
      } else {
      if(!isNaN(parseInt(document.body.clientWidth))) {
      pageWidth=parseInt(document.body.clientWidth);
      } else {
      pageWidth=700;
      }
      }

      Falling back on a default if neither works.

      Does someone have a better suggestion?
    • This is why the web is fucked, and will remain fucked. Ignoring the fact that it's impossible, here is no valid reason for a web page to look the same in all browsers.

      Yes, I said "no valid reason", and I mean it. I know some of you will give "presenting a uniform corporate image" as a reason. But it still won't be valid unless the corporate image you want to present is "style over substance".
      • No, it's possible. Just use a big png and an imap.... unless you need to count video cards and bit depths.
  • My colleagues at work think *I* am nuts because I refuse to use notepad or Visual Café's builtin-text editor to edit .java source files, preferring instead a much more powerful older DOS-based text editor (TSE [semware.com]). They're gonna suffer a heart attack when they see this.

  • I don't know if there's an official term for it, but I often write a function in one language that writes code for another language - for example, using PHP or Perl to write javascript. I've even gone so far as to use PHP to write a SQL statement which in turn is used to determine what will go in a Javascript function that writes HTML code. The example below is rather pointless, but I have come across real situations where it is beneficial to use that many languages together.

    function hello() {
    $q = "select * from helloworld where id=1;";
    $connect = pg_pconnect("dbname=hw user=webber password=dipsh*t");
    $cursor = pg_exec($connect, $query);
    $r = pg_fetch_row($cur,0);
    echo "<script>\n";
    echo "function do_it() {\n\tdocument.write(\"".$r[0]."\");\n}\n";
    echo "</script>";
    }

    That's three "real" languages and one markup language. And if you think that was crazy, think about this - I just had to write that in HTML in a slashdot posting textbox!

    My next goal is to make the javascript write out HTML for parameters in a Java applet. And, the whole PHP page is going to be written by a C program exectuted by a cron job that was set up via a perl script (webmin!) That's eight different languages - perl -> bash (I think) -> C -> PHP -> SQL and Javascript -> HTML -> Java. Sadly, I don't think that's nearly as crazy as the quadrilingual program. I need to learn Brainf*ck.

  • only it was in human to human language......oh wait we have some that can't understand their own language and those languages which are universal like money and the hand/finger gesture of giving someone the bird.

    How may languages is that understood in?
    • oh wait we have some that can't understand their own language and those languages which are universal like money and the hand/finger gesture of giving someone the bird.

      Slight nit-pick ... in JSL (Japanese Sign Language) the 'birdie' is used quite often, and does not have any negative connotation to it when used in the context of that language.

      However, it can be assumed that a fair number of people in the Japanese speaking (and signing) world have had to communicate with the western world, and they know that perticular hand guesture may not be taken well :)
  • A genetic algorithm might be a great way to produce such examples. You may be able to speed it up by having lists of common language commands to use as mutation material.

    Turn it into a screen-saver ala Seti style, and maybe /. can set the world record......if there is such a record.

  • Esoteric language challenge (Score:3)

    by The Pim ( 140414 ) on Sunday May 12, 2002 @12:58AM (#3504685)
    If you want to test your knowledge of esoteric programming languages, try this problem [mit.edu] from the 2002 MIT Mystery Hunt [mit.edu].

    I was happy to solve 1840, even though I immediately recognized the language, because it is poorly specified and there is no interpreter. But that was nothing compared with my teammates, who solved 1183 with nothing but the problem and pure reason.

  • not valid c (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    He tries to declare an array with a size returned by a function call. In C, array sizes have to be static (that's why C++ has "new" for arrays). He's writing to illegal locations in memory.
  • I've been working on truly bilingual code for a few years now. Machine code. That will run on both PPC and x86. Now, if only the damn elf header didn't cause one cpu to reject it, even though the binary is valid...

    Same with x86 machine code that is clever enough to determine if it's running inside of linux or windows... even though the code itself is valid, the elf vs. .EXE headers aren't even close. Oh well.

  • Editors, edit! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by czth ( 454384 ) on Sunday May 12, 2002 @01:40AM (#3504779) Homepage
    mtve writes: "Have you ever seen source code that is valid on four languages: Perl, C, Befunge, and BrainF*ck? During the last Perlgolf season famous Perl hacker Jérôme Quelin submitted one such inconceivable masterpiece and now he has published an expanded explanation of his solution. Caution: that text can hurt your mental health. Play Perlgolf!"

    Why is it that Slashdot's editors can't fix the mistakes in the above and many, many other articles before posting? Either they don't notice the errors (in which case they should be sacked and replaced), or it's that important to post the article a minute earlier (highly unlikely), or somehow the original wording is considered "sacred" and Not To Be Changed (stupid if true). Come on here. Does the error rate on the front page have to be so high?

    The only reason I'm not blaming the submitter (mtve) as well is because it's possible English is not his first language (or even his second). If it is, shame on him too. We all deserve better.

    (Oh yes, for those clueless enough to say "What errors", I threw in the required changes in bold. Also, isn't one Perlgolf link enough?)

    czth

  • This is practically art. Just reading this guy's solution was amazing, the way he reasoned about each step, and just the IDEA of it. Absolutely unbelievable.

    However, I'd like to see more difficult languages. Has anyone done LISP? Has anyone even ATTEMPTED Haskell or ML?

  • Now THIS is what slashdot is all about.! (Score:3)

    by Performer Guy ( 69820 ) on Sunday May 12, 2002 @02:30AM (#3504901)
    This would be worth a subscription if there was more of it (not more of the same but more in a similar vein of geekiness). REAL geek news! None of that Kayz crap or friking freshmen case mods with melted plastic and neon bulbs. Let them come and stare in awe as the fail to grok the code because the wasted their lives drilling holes in their PC case.
  • This just shows what coding Perl will do to you.
  • check the following page for source code that can be used in many languages...

    polyglots list [nyx.net]

  • A Brainfuck Interpreter in PHP (Score:4, Informative)

    by the_danielsan ( 512604 ) on Sunday May 12, 2002 @04:05AM (#3505073)

    I wrote a Brainfuck interpreter in PHP [lorch.cc] a while ago which also includes a short introduction [lorch.cc] to the language.

    By the way, Brainfuck was initially named "Mental Masturbation", but the Author Oliver Müller then stuck to a less offensive name :)

  • That story was okay. I have a program I've made that works in just about anything out there. I really wasn't sure about sharing the source code with you people on slashdot, but why not...

    -- Begin Code snippit beneath this line ---



    -- End Code snippit above this line ---

    Try it, it should work. You see, the key to getting it to work for everything out there is to compromise what the program can do.

    Fortunately, since the goal was to make the program run in as many languages as possible, I can make the code as minimalistic as possible, too!

    By the way, the code I mentioned above is property of myself. This code cannot be used in programs without my expressed permission. Doing so would be a violation of the terms in which I am distributing the above code.

    Licensing agreements are available. Contact me for more info.

    • http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=32469&cid=3504 205

      Poster named Damiam, you are in violation of the terms of my license. You are hereby asked to cease and desist from distributing your code, and will be contacted shortly with a cease and desist letter saying the same message.

      If you do not pay royalties to me, I shall strip you of all your Karma, and fart in your general direction. :)

      By the way, if you claim prior art, this is not true. I came up with this program back in 1984 when I was banging enter on the keyboard of my Commodore Pet computer and realized that I was programming it without my knowledge.

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