ioccc/1995/leo

Best Use of Obfuscation:

Leonid A. Broukhis
46728 Crawford St., apt. 20
Fremont, CA 94539 
USA

To build:

    make all

To run:

./leo [ deep ] [ right ] [ Variable ] [ cycle [ freq ] ]

See the author's information below on these details.

Try:

./leo 1 | cat - /dev/tty | gs -

./leo 37 80 | cat - /dev/tty | gs -

If you don't have gs or an equivalent postscript viewer, try:

echo "" | ./leo 1 > foo.ps

and send foo.ps to your local postscript printer or open it in an appropriate application (e.g. GIMP).

Judges' comments:

Press return after each image is drawn.

The variable names are element-ary. If you find this confusing, remember that it is nu-clear. :-)

Some Ghostscripts/Postscript programs cleared the screen right after the image is drawn, so we added element 106 which acts as an input buffer.

To qualify for a category specially for yourself in the Geek code, find out all the secret switches that the author doesn't divulge ! (All switches are single characters on the command line - anything that's not a number is a candidate)

Author's comments:

The usage is:

./leo [ deep ] [ right ] [ Variable ] [ cycle [ freq ] ]

where the first three are literal words, cycle' is a positive integer (0 is ignored), and freq' is an integer (default = 0) supposed to be in range 0..100 (bigger values are allowed, however). Invalid parameters and options usually stop the command line parsing (but not always, why?). The actual position of the word options does not matter, so "prog.sh right Variable 1 70" is equivalent to "prog.sh 0 0 0 1 Variable 70 right", etc.

If Variable' is used, cycle' is almost ignored (see below) but has to be present if you want to enter `freq' (and you usually do).

Some options to try (besides the obvious):

./leo 1 | cat - /dev/tty | gs -

This draws the basic pattern I invented in high school:

You take a big sheet of "arithmetic" paper and draw a line of length 1 (between 2 crossings) it the center of the sheet:

			|

This makes 2 open ends (I think the notion of an "open end" doesn't require explanations) in step 1. Now, until there are open ends in step N, repeat: for each open end pretend it points north and draw 2 lines going northwest and northeast from it to the nearest crossings. This needs to be done "simultaneously" for all ends that are open at the moment.

Step 2: ./ | / \

Step 3: | | ./ | __ / \ __ | |

Step 4: . ./ ./ _| |__/ / ./
| _./ .__/ / | |
/ ./ \

Step 5: .| . |. | ./ ./ | _| |__/ ./ ./ . I | I _./ .__/ ./ | | . |./ ./ .| | |

The lines marked by I show the places where "simultaneity" is significant.

Note that so far all the drawings represent valid structural formulas of some organic substances.

step 1: ethane step 2: 2,3-dimethylbutane step 3: (2,5-dimethyl;3,4-isopropyl)-hexane step 4 and 5: I don't know. Do you? etc.

Step 6: ./ ./ ./ ./ .| . |. .| . |. _| ./ ./ |__/ _| ./ ./ |/ / __| |/ \ / _| |__/
_./ ./ ./ __./ ./ ./ X__| | |X or <| | |> / __./ ./ \ / _./ .__/
_./ | | ./ __./ | | ./ / |./ ./ .| / |./ ./ .| | | | | / \ / \ / \ / \

depending on the desired "hairiness". The original (paper-based) algorithm was "hairy", but it didn't look as good on the screen.

The program cannot handle non-hairy mode 100% correctly - step 6 happens to be

                                  |__
    ...__/                  ...__/
    ...  \                  ...  \.
    ...__/                  ...__/|__
    ...__Y  and step 7:     ...__Y
    ...  \                  ...  \
    ...__/                  ...__/
         \                       \.__
                                  |

and so on: the horisontal symmetry has been lost. That's why the opening for step 1 is not a single line but a cross:

                            \./
                            / \

To watch it repeatedly (as a screen saver), use:

./leo 2 | cat - /dev/tty | gs -

The command line:

./leo Variable 1 | cat - /dev/tty | gs -

This draws the same as above. Try:

./leo Variable 1 1 | cat - /dev/tty | gs -

what happened to the picture? Increase `freq' and watch the changes.

If `cycle' is more than 1, the program loops, allowing the user to enjoy randomly changing patterns (the delay is 3 sec), but there is a secret switch to suppress looping : useful if you want to pipe the output to a printer.

uudecode the spoiler below if you really want to know.

begin 664 spoiler1 M*%1H92!C;VQO;B J:7,J('1H92!S96-R970@<W=I=&-H("T@=&AE('-P86-E =(&)E9F]R92!I="!I<R!N;W0@82!M:7-T86ME*0II

end

If Variable' is used, the actual value of cycle' doesn't matter, as far as it is > 1. To figure out what difference cycle' makes when Variable' is not used, try

./leo Variable 37 80 | cat - /dev/tty | gs -

and other values of cycle'; smaller values usually require smaller values of freq' for the patterns to be non-trivial

The options deep' and right' make the patterns to be drawn in different manners. Try all the examples above with deep' and with right'. What is the difference between them?

...There is a little flaw in the implementation of the algorithm, and sometimes the patterns are not symmetrical when they ought to be (the program needs to be slightly changed to expose the flaw, otherwise it is hardly noticeable, if ever).

A quick and dirty fix (turned on by another secret switch) makes the patterns symmetrical, but a little too HAIRY.

There is one more secret switch (it shall remain nameless), and I don't even want to explain what it does. You've been warned!

*               *               *

Special thanks:

• to PostScript syntax designers for the curly braces;
• to Dmitry Mendeleyev for his periodic table of elements;
• to Hydrogen for having 2 more isotopes.