1.7 KiB
Best small program
Maarten Litmaath
The Netherlands
To build:
make
To run:
./litmaath some text
There is an alternate version provided. See the Alternate code section below.
Try:
./litmaath eschew obfuscation
Alternate code:
This alternate code, added to help understand the entry and for fun, is code that we suggested at the time of the entry publication but which we never put in a file.
To build:
make alt
Use litmaath.alt as you would litmaath above.
Try:
./litmaath.alt six was afraid of seven because seven eight nine
Judges' remarks:
Note the unusual structure:
while (<condition>)
;
Did you notice that the body is empty?
Furthermore, it's interesting to note that only two variables are used to achieve everything.
The best one can do to understand how the program works is to give it
two small strings as arguments, and follow the program closely. One
could make the body of the while loop an fprintf with interesting
variables like:
fprintf(stderr,
"argv=%lo *argv=%lo **argv=%c argv[1]=%lo *argv[1]=%c argc=%d\n",
(long) argv, (long) *argv, *argv && **argv ? **argv : '@',
(long) argv[1], argv[1] && *argv[1] ? *argv[1] : '@', argc);
... which is what the alternate code is.
Author's remarks:
No remarks were provided by the author.
Copyright and CC BY-SA 4.0 License:
This file is Copyright (c) 2023 by Landon Curt Noll. All Rights Reserved. You are free to share and adapt this file under the terms of this license:
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)
For more information, see: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/