Cody Boone Ferguson
c3e9b4c43e
Added .txt to help with browsers/GitHub etc. in how to manage it. Also link to it in the README.md file.
43 lines
2.2 KiB
Plaintext
43 lines
2.2 KiB
Plaintext
On Writing An IOCCC One-Liner
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There is a tug-of-war when writing a one-liner between obscurity
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and length. On the one hand, one-liners are often obscure in nature,
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simply by doing so much with so little. As well, the reduction of
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interesting logic into a single line typically involves transformations
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that tend to obscure the logic in the hunt for fewer bytes.
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Sometimes, the minimalist logic can be easily deciphered because
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of the simplified logic required to get it into one line, and due
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to the almost necessary reliance on stdlib routines to do the heavy
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lifting. printf, scanf, getchar, putchar, atoi, isspace, isdigit,
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are succinct but explicit size-reducing functions, and may sometimes
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open an unwanted window on the nature of the otherwise obscured logic.
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The flip-side, replacing these routines, invariably requires more
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bytes. So what is a one-liner-writer to do when confronted by such
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a choice? Therein lies the art form, and the risk: the additional
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obscurity requiring additional bytes may push a one-liner close to
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or over the limit. Fewer bytes is generally better, until it is not.
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Further, the predilections of the judges may change daily, for all
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this author knows. The guidelines are opaque on purpose. So brevity,
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or better obscurity? Both if at all possible, but perhaps at some
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risk for being juuuuuust too long, or not quiiiiiiite obscure enough.
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Finally, the desire for clean compilation is almost anathema to an
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obscure one-liner. The extra characters of the types and storage
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classes, which are historically implicit, but made explicit to
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silence modern compilers, tend to occupy the very precious bytes
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left in the one-liner budget.
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It is a fun challenge to write something "interesting" within the
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draconian budget. As history has shown, most years someone conceives
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of something clever enough. This year, the present author is hopeful
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the artistic balance is deemed favorable, and is interesting to the
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world at large. But if not, it was still fun to write -- and with no
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small amount of angst for the final form of the entry, of which there
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were several different attempts at the same algorithm, each with
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different compromises in logic, expression, and obscurity mechanisms.
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Because there is a tug-of-war between obscurity and brevity.
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