Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Question

This "sandbox" is a place where Code Golf users can get feedback on prospective challenges they wish to post to main. This is useful because writing a clear and fully specified challenge on your first try can be difficult, and there is a much better chance of your challenge being well received if you post it in the sandbox first.

Sandbox FAQ

Posting

To post to the sandbox, scroll to the bottom of this page and click "Answer This Question". Click "OK" when it asks if you really want to add another answer.

Write your challenge just as you would when actually posting it, though you can optionally add a title at the top. You may also add some notes about specific things you would like to clarify before posting it. Other users will help you improve your challenge by rating and discussing it.

When you think your challenge is ready for the public, go ahead and post it, and replace the post here with a link to the challenge and delete the sandbox post.

Discussion

The purpose of the sandbox is to give and receive feedback on posts. If you want to, feel free to give feedback to any posts you see here. Important things to comment about can include:

• Parts of the challenge you found unclear
• Comments addressing specific points mentioned in the proposal
• Problems that could make the challenge uninteresting or unfit for the site

You don't need any qualifications to review sandbox posts. The target audience of most of these challenges is code golfers like you, so anything you find unclear will probably be unclear to others.

If you think one of your posts requires more feedback, but it's been ignored, you can ask for feedback in The Nineteenth Byte. It's not only allowed, but highly recommended! Be patient and try not to nag people though, you might have to ask multiple times.

It is recommended to leave your posts in the sandbox for at least several days, and until it receives upvotes and any feedback has been addressed.

Other

Search the sandbox / Browse your pending proposals

The sandbox works best if you sort posts by active.

To add an inline tag to a proposal, use shortcut link syntax with a prefix: [tag:king-of-the-hill]. To search for posts with a certain tag, include the name in quotes: "king-of-the-hill".

Answer 1

nth number that multiplies k equals its reverse

Tags: code-golfing,math

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It's quite simple, given n and k, output the nth number such that, if the number is multiplied by k and its digits reversed, it equals the original number. Both input and output are positive numbers.

---

The challenge originally is from Mego, posted on my broken challenge. Firstly, I used 4 instead of k, but based on my tests, only 1 and 4 values gives output, so I decided to put 4 instead of k, finally I put k back. But the challenge would be ruin with that putting "9"*(n-1) between 2178, so no loopholes will be permitted.

I just posted here for further discussions, suggestions and improvements.

Answer 2

Write a program that can determine the median value of a read-only (static, const, immutable) sequence of unsorted numbers (array, list, stream) but minimises storage, without completely sacrificing speed.

The basic bracket is that if we copied all the values into a sorted list and then picked the middle one (or average of the middle pair), it would require storage of the whole sequence, so the storage would be 'n', and the performance would be O(n log n).

The score is the total cost of finding the median of 1 bn values, divided by 1 bn, at a cost of 8 per value stored, 1 per comparison or numerical operation and 1 per read, for the worst case. Thus if our insertion sort costs exactly n*log2(n), the for 1 bn values the total score is 1 for the read, 29.8 for the sort + 8 for the storage, for a total of 37.8.

If instead we skimmed the whole range to get the average (costing 1 for the read and 1 for the summation), we could then only store some portion of the range to sort; but then we would need a second pass to be sure that there were an equal number of values above and below this median (at the cost of another 2).

Lowest score wins, low-level languages (C/C++/D) only so that we can count the actual operations.

Answer 3

Reinventing the Modularization Wheel

code-golf

In a language of your choice, implement a function or language construct that imports another file of the same language and executes it, making exported values from that file available to the calling file. If one already exists, you may not use it in your implementation.

For example, in Node, you would have to implement require() without using require(), even indirectly. In C, you would implement a function or construct equivalent to #include without using #include in the implementation. In Python, you would implement import. In client-side JavaScript, I suppose the closest equivalent would be <script src="..."></script>. So JavaScript implementations would be restricted to AJAX calls only, since <script> tags would not be allowed in the implementation.

This is not to say that you aren't allowed to use the built-in import at all, but only use them in the implementation. The intention here is to reinvent the wheel.

Requirements

• Do not include the built-in modularization in any way in your import implementation.
• Standard libraries only.
• Byte-count includes the implementation itself, and any special changes that need to exist on the file being imported, if any.
• The function or construct accepts a relative file path. As long as this is satisfied, you may extend the functionality of your modularization to have global imports, or even remote imports (like using a URL as input).
• The imported file must have a construct for denoting values that must be exported. Only these values should be directly accessible from the calling file.
• Using the built-in export function or construct of your language is acceptable, and if it is a built-in, it does not need to be included in your byte-count.
• If your language does not have modularization, then implementing a mechanic for exporting should be included in your byte-count.
• Document the usage of your function or construct.

This is code-golf and the shortest answer in bytes wins!

Answer 4

Print a Pilcrow Scarecrow

Print the following ascii scarecrow using the pilcrow character ¶

    ¶¶¶
   ¶¶¶¶¶
    ¶¶¶
    ¶¶¶  ¶
 ¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶
    ¶¶¶
    ¶¶¶
   ¶ ¶ ¶
  ¶¶ ¶ ¶¶
     ¶
     ¶
¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶

• Padding must be with (space) and built with ¶
• Trailing padding is okay
• Print to stdout
• This is code-golf

---

code-golf ascii-art kolmogorov-complexity

Answer 5

It's time to unify!

code-golf logic math

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Introduction

Wouldn't it be awesome if they whole world would be united and there would be no conflicts and disputes? Now while you can't unify nations, you certainly can unify expressions to resolve their unknown relation and conflicts.
Your mission is simple: Unify the world (of expressions)!
And of course, because you're lazy you want to do this with the least effort (read: code-length) possible.

Specification

Input

Your input will be a unification problem. You can format it however you want and need, as long as you don't encode additional information to what is given in the standard / example format. Encoding the number of arguments per function into the input is allowed but not mandatory, you can also just derive this from the input.

Example format:
Your first input will be list of function symbols, which is represented as a list of pairs of strings and non-negative integers.
Your second input will be a list of equalities (you may represent each as a string), which represent the unification problem. They will be represented as a list of strings as well. Anything which is not a parenthesis or an equality sign can be considered a variable. If the number of arguments is 0, parenthesis are omitted.

Example input: [("f",1),("g",2),("h",3),("a",0)], [x=f((g(a,y)),y=h(g(f(a),z),f(z),a)]

Output

The output is either some falsy value or something representing a list of equalities. It is allowed to use the empty list to indicate a falsy value.

What to do?

You need to unify the inputs you got. In the end there must only be variables on the left side of the equality-signs if the you didn't encounter an error. If you did you need to report it (-> false or empty list).

To do the unification, you can - but don't have to - use Martelli and Montanari's algorithm, which goes as follows:

E is always the (complete) set of equalities except the current one
x,y,z are variables, f,g,h are functions, t1,t2, ...,tn,s1,...,sn are arbitrary terms (compositions of functions and variables)
{x=x} E => E, e.g. if you encounter two equivalent variables, discard
{f(t1,...,tn)=f(s1,...,sn)} E => {t1=s1,t2=s2,...,tn=sn} E, e.g. if you encounter the same function on both sides, unify the arguments along with your rest
{f(t1,...,tn}=g(s1,...,sn)} E => Error, if the symbols are different, you can't succeed
{x=f(t1,...,tn)} E => {x=f(t1,...,tn)} E[x -> f(t1,...,tn)], e.g. if you see a variable equals a term, replace the variable with this term in all other expressions
{x=f(t1,...,tn)} E => Error, e.g. if any of the t1,..,tn contain x at some point
{f(t1,...,tn)=x} E => {x=f(t1,...,tn)} E, e.g. if you see a variable "naked" on the right side, swap the sides

Two step-by-step examples are provided below additionally to the test cases.

Corner Cases

You can get an empty list of function symbols, this means you have exclusively variables in the second input.
The input list of equalities will never be empty, your code does not need to handle this case.

Who wins?

This is code-golf so the shortest answer in bytes wins!
Standard rules apply of course.

Test-cases

All these test cases use the functions [("a",0),("b",0),("f",1),("g",1),("h",2)]

[x=b] -> [x=b]
[a=x] -> [x=a]
[a=b] -> []
[y=f(x)] -> [y=f(x)] 
[x=f(x)] -> []
[f(x)=f(y)] -> [x=y] 
[f(x)=g(y)] -> []
[h(x,y)=h(a,b)] -> [x=a,y=b] 
[x=f(z),y=f(a),x=y] -> [x=f(a),y=f(a),z=a]
[h(x,f(y))=z,z=h(f(y),v)] -> [x=f(y),v=f(y),z=h(f(y),f(y))]

Step-By-Step Example

Example 1: Test Case 9
[x=f(z),y=f(a),x=y] => (replace x in third equation with first x)
[x=f(z),y=f(a),f(z)=y] => (replace y in third equation)
[x=f(z),y=f(a),f(z)=f(a)] => (remove f's in third equation)
[x=f(z),y=f(a),z=a] => (replace the z in the first expression)
[x=f(a),y=f(a),z=a]

Example 2:
Let [("f",2),("g",2),("a",0),("b",0)] be your functions
[f(g(a,x),g(y,b)=f(x,g(v,w)),f(x,g(v,w))=f(g(x,a),g(v,b))] => (remove f in second equation)
[f(g(a,x),g(y,b)=f(x,g(v,w)),x=g(x,a),g(v,w)=g(v,b))] => (function symbol missmatch in equation 2)
[]

Answer 6

create a golfed down regexp that matches all substrings

inspired by Determine the "Luck" of a string where I found a way to golf almost 30 bytes at once
(with a falling trick for that challenge, but I still like the idea).

The word "lucky" contains 15 different substrings:

• lucky
• luck, ucky
• luc, uck, cky
• lu, uc, ck, ky
• l, u, c, k, y

Challenge
Create a program or function that, for a given string s, creates the shortest possible regexp using basic PCRE syntax that matches and returns all substrings of s and nothing else.

• code needs not to be case sensible
• basic syntax means: alternatives, quantifiers, grouping and custom character classes (e.g. [abc])
• other features (assertions, backreferences, recursion etc.) may be used, but are not required to qualify
• the result may include delimiters and modifiers

The result for lucky would be l?ucky?|l?uc?|c?ky?|l|c|y.

---

• is the description sufficient?
• the challenge not too easy, not too hard?
• any other hints you might have?
• I will add test cases that expose possible bugs (like silly and digdug)
• not sure yet if I will go for shortest code yet

Answer 7

Write a Gopher Interpreter

This code golf challenge will task you with writing an interpreter for an esolang I created a while back called Gopher, Details on the language can be found Here

Pass Conditions

This challenge requires you to create an Interpreter (Or you could go a step ahead and create a Compile/Transpiler) however for the code to pass as correct it must meet the following criteria

• Take in a single input being the Gopher Code

• Output the result of the Interpreted code

• Invalid code does not need to be handled, however you may do so if you wish

• As this is code-golf the smallest byte size wins

Example Input and Output

Input:

&++<'×<&÷+<^-<<×-<#!+<$@-<&@<×-<@++<@<.!<=

Output:

Hello World

Answer 8

Having had a look, it seems there isn't a challenge for "Given any date, output the day of the week". Is that a challenge worth having?

Something like

"Given an input date, in the form dd/mm/yyyy, output the day of the week"

Shortest code wins

What do we think? perhaps this already exists and I didn't find it.

Answer 9

Golf your way from (inc|dec)rements to the basic math operations

Write five different functions or programs that do addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and modulo with integers by only using increments, decrements, loops/recursion and comparisons.

• Assume division & modulo will never receive 0 or negative integers as the divisor/modulus.
• Modulo's result has the sign of its dividend.
• Division truncates its quotient, e.g divide(11, 4) returns 2 and divide(-5, 3) returns -1.
• Programs must print the result to STDOUT. Functions must return the result.
• Your five functions/programs may invoke each other.
• All functions/programs must support 32-bit signed integers, i.e everything between -2³¹ and 2³¹-1 (inclusive). Overflow is allowed, i.e it's OK if add(2147483647, 1) returns -2147483648.
• Explicitly adding/subtracting 1 to/from numbers is allowed, in case you use a programming language that doesn't have built-ins for incrementing and decrementing.
• Shortest program wins as long as it doesn't exploit standard loopholes!

code-golfrestricted-sourcemath

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I seriously have no idea how to make test cases for this.

Answer 10

ASCII to Unicode equation beautifier

You may well be used to typing equations in ASCII, but with the advent of Unicode we can spruce them up a bit. We can fix

• Powers (numeric superscripts only)
• Numeric subscripts
• Mathematical signs (-, *, / ^ → -, ×, ÷, ↑)

Examples:

x^3 - 1 = (x - 1)(x^2 + x + 1)  →  x³ − 1 = (x − 1)(x² + x + 1)
g_0 = 3^^3^^3 -= 3^(3^3)        →  g₀ = 3↑↑3↑↑3 = 3↑(3³)
800*600                         →  800×600
1/x                             →  1÷x

You may assume that all digits directly after a ^ or _ are meant to be super/subscripts (and the ^ or _ to be removed) and that all the mathematical signs are to be replaced wherever they appear.

This is code-golf, so the shortest solution wins.

Answer 11

Autotune a chord

Auto-Tune is a pitch correction program which alters the pitch without changing the length. It can be used to fix off-pitch chords in music, which is good because I have an out of tune piano. The goal of this challenge is given some input waveform which contains a single chord played on my piano, tune each note to the nearest equally tempered note found on a standard piano (see Input for more details).

Input

The input is something which looks like a time-domain audio sample input containing a single chord being played. All data is sampled at 192kHz, with 16-bit PCM (little endian integer), mono channel. The input may come from any source desired (file io, stdio, function parameter, etc.).

Output

The output of your code should be something which looks like a time-domain audio sample containing the tuned chord. It does not need to have the same sample rate or datapoint format as the input, but must be the same length in real time as the original sample (or as close as possible). The output may be to any source desired (file io, stdio, function parameter, etc.).

Examples

See this github repo for various inputs and outputs. The provided examples have inputs/outputs in an uncompressed wav file. Feel free to re-encode/gut the data for your inputs.

Scoring

This is code golf; shortest code wins. Standard loopholes apply. You may use any libraries/builtins so long as they were not designed specifically for performing pitch correction.

Main concern: This challenge seems potentially too difficult, so one alternative I've been considering is changing the piano samples into sine waves at the fundamental frequencies (avoids issues with amplitude decay/harmonics). An even simpler challenge might be to give inputs in the frequency domain (list of fundamental frequencies), though I'm not sure that would make for an interesting challenge as it seems almost too easy at that point.

code-golf music

Answer 12

This will be a code-golf challenge. Additional tags are internet, date and math.

How fast is your Stack Exchange community?

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tl;dr

Your task is to find how fast a Stack Exchange community reacts. "How fast" is here the average of the time elapsed until the first answer or the closing of the question.

Input

• the Stack Exchange site's name, e.g. stackoverflow, codegolf, codereview etc.
• optionally the Stack Exchange API URL: https://api.stackexchange.com/2.2/

Requirements

• Calculate the average time it takes until the first answer or closing of the question.
• Take the 1000 latest questions into account, e.q. ten API requests with 100 items each.

Output

• Output the average time in minutes and seconds, like 01:23 or 1:23.
• Run your program at least against stackoverflow, codegolf and code review and show the results.
• Feel free to add results for your other favorite communities as well.

Boilerplate

• You can write a program or a function. If it is an anonymous function, please include an example of how to invoke it.
• This is code-golf so shortest answer in bytes wins.
• Standard loopholes are disallowed.
• Leading/trailing whitespaces/newlines are fine.

Answer 13

Convert a BMP image to grayscale

The images manipulation is a great way to exercise and increase your skills. In my opinion it's also very interesting.

What you must do?

The objective of exercise is much easy: convert an image bmp colorful in an image grey.
You can use every language, the question most appreciated will be that don't use library.
Image stock: http://www.mediafire.com/convkey/c491/p7aya9cxafvfc91zg.jpg Image converted: http://www.mediafire.com/convkey/3903/rcigd79pkwd12qczg.jpg?size_id=3

Answer 14

Do I have an emoji?

code-golf string

Given an input string in your language, return truthy/falsey if the input contains an valid Unicode emoji character.

What is an Emoji?

The word emoji comes from the Japanese:

絵 (e ≅ picture) 文 (mo ≅ writing) 字 (ji ≅ character).

Emojis are pictorial symbols used to represent feelings, actions, or objects.

For this challenge, use the Full Emoji Data list provided by Unicode as a reference to determine which characters are valid Emojis.

Sample test cases:

"" -> 0

"💩" -> 1

"hello💩" -> 1

"hello" -> 0

"!±≡𩸽" -> 0

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Discussion:

This seems trivial, but I noticed we didn't have an emoji detection challenge. There might be a concern about the encoding of the input string, but reading the linked meta posts about Strings I feel that this challenge can use whatever String format the language used in the answer supports.

The acceptable output for booleans is also up for discussion. Do we have a meta post on what output formats are acceptable for booleans?

Answer 15

Trim trailing spaces in less than O(n²) time

Since s/\s+$// runs in O(n²) time, Stack Overflow needs to replace it with something faster. Please write a code snippet for them. Your score will be the number of bytes in your submission, multiplied by the time taken to process a string of 1000 non-spaces with 1,000,000 leading and trailing spaces, divided by 1000 times the time taken to process a string of 1-non space with 1,000 leading and trailing spaces. (In other words, if your code runs in O(n) time then this should cancel out.)

Answer 16

Reverse stdin to stdout, Unicode aware and by grapheme clusters

It's 2016. High time that we were Unicode-aware, don't you think?

Given a UTF-8 string on stdin, reverse it by extended grapheme clusters (as defined by the Unicode consortium; this can be found here, for instance) and place it on stdout. This is seemingly a trivial challenge, but surprisingly difficult in many languages.

You may not use an explicit end-of-file character - if supported, use EOF. If not supported, use an explicit length at the start of the string, and document the format.

Note that the string may be of any length (barring RAM limitations).

You must handle direction override characters "properly", in the sense that the directionality of every character must remain the same after reversing the string.

Answer 17

Given an ordinal A and a nonnegative integer B, compute f_A(B)

A will be expressed in Cantor Normal Form. A number is in Cantor Normal Form if it is 1, or if it is either of the form a+b or w^a, where a and b are in Cantor Normal Form, and w is the ordinal omega.

f_A(B) is the fast-growing hierarchy, specifically, the Wainer Hierarchy. f_0(n)=n+1. f_(a+1)(n)= n iterations of f_a to n. f_a(n)=f_an if a is a limit ordinal. a[n] is the nth member of the fundamental sequence for a.

Answer 18

code-golf number

Difficulty Naming

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Introduction

In the game osu!, players can make their own beatmaps (levels). The harder the beatmap is, the bigger the star rating will be.

Beatmaps have star icons with different colors and letters according to their star rating.

osu! has also four game modes. The shape of the icon will change depending on the game mode.

The Challenge

Given a star rating and a gamemode, output the (generally used) difficulty name.

The Input

• A positive floating-point number (star rating)
  • You can assume the number will never have more than two decimal places.
• A positive integer (game mode)
  • 1 is Standard, 2 is Taiko, 3 is Catch the Beat and 4 is Mania (you can use other numbers for the game modes, these are the default.)

The Output

• A string (difficulty name)

Use this table to determine the output:

diff table http://image.prntscr.com/image/174e34e56dbb40ad81b209fac3fdc5bc.png

(if the star rating is exactly 5.25, it counts as Above 5.25)

Rules

• This is code-golf, so the shortest solution wins.
• Standard loopholes are disallowed.
• You can take the input either as an array/list, a string separated by commas or spaces, or each number individually.
• Again, you can use other numbers for the game modes.

Test Cases

2.24, 2 ---> Futsuu
1.1, 4 ---> Basic
3.14, 1 ---> Hard
7.0, 3 ---> Overdose
5.0, 4 ---> Exhaust
31415.0, 2 ---> Ura Oni
0.01, 1 ---> Easy
5.25, 1 ---> Expert

---

Sandbox

If you see any grammar errors or anything like that, please tell me, I'm not a native speaker.

Answer 19

Could it all add up to nothing?

Given an input number, return a truthy value if it is possible to arrange permutations of + and - signs to make the sum of the range up to that value 0.

Note that you don't have to output which set of combinations is truthy.

Test cases:

1 (1) --> Falsy
2 (1,2) --> Falsy
3 (1,2,3) --> 1+2-3, Truthy
4 (1,2,3,4) --> -1+2+3-4, Truthy
5 (1,...,5) --> Falsy
6 (1,...,6) --> Falsy
7 (1,...,7) --> 1+2-3-4+5+6-7, Truthy
8 (1,...,8) --> 1+2-3-4-5-6+7+8, Truthy

Just one thing - no using eval or similar commands.

This is code-golf so the shortest answer in bytes wins!

Sandbox notes

Require a range or a list as input?

Answer 20

Grow and Visualize Decision Tree

META: work in progress...

• Would providing the points as an image instead of a list of coordinates simplify the challenge?

code-golfgraphical-outputgraph-theorymachine-learning

Given two sets of points in the plane with coordinates x,y, both in [0,1), grow a (binary) decision tree as specified below and output a square pixel image of a given size, that visualizes the corresponding tree.

How to grow the tree

The we call the two sets here classes and follow the following recursive approach:

1. If at least one of the classes is empty, label the current node as a leaf of the nonempty class and stop. Otherwise:

2. First find the mean of each of the x (or y)-coordinates of each of the two classes, and find the mean/center c of those two means. Then we partition both classes as follows: All points with an x (or y)-coordinate strictly smaller than c belong to one half, all the other ones to the other half. The we set the current node to the decision is the x-cooridinate (or y-coordinate) less than c?

3. For each of the halves, go back to step 1 and 2, and set the resulting nodes as the child nodes from the current node. If you previously considered the x-coordinates, then consider y-coordinates and vice versa.

How to visualize the tree

We partition the the unit interval [0,1) into N equidistant sub intervals [0,1/N), [1/N,2/N), [2/N,3/N)... and correspondingly the unit square [0,1)x[0,1) into squares

[i/N,(i+1)/N)x[j/N,(j+1)/N) for i,j=0,1,2,...,N-1

which later will be represented by a pixel. For each square [i/N,(i+1)/N)x[j/N,(j+1)/N) we classify the point i/N,j/N with the tree we just grew and colour the corresponding pixel with the corresponding colour.

For the example above the output would look like so:

Details

• Input: An integerN>5 and two sets of points in any convenient format (e.g. as two separate list of points, or as a single list with a label for each point etc.) You can assume that in total there is at least one point.
• Output: A pixel image (vector images composed of squares are ok too) of the visualization.
  • You have to choose any two distinct colours, I recommend blue and red.
  • The x-axis should point to the right, the y-axis can point in any direction.
  • The submission should display the image on the screen or save it to a file (like jpg/png/tiff or similar formats)

Answer 21

Quine-ify PPCG Answers!

Write a program that, when executed, returns the markdown file to your answer.

So, something like this:

#Python: 123 bytes

`{insert code here}`

Required things:

• Header must be one hash (#)
• The "code part" must be indented with four spaces (or surrounded with backticks if it's a one-liner).
• The code part must be the actual code used to run the program.
• There must be a separation of a newline between the header and the code.
• The program's display bytecount MUST equal the program's actual bytecount.

Meta:

• Most importantly: is it even possible, at all?
• Do I need more clarifications?
• Has this been done already?

Answer 22

Make a sequence from a sequence!

(Title is bad and I should feel bad)

Given a sequence of positive Integers, take each consecutive pair of two (without taking an element two times) (x,y) and print y x times.

For example for 3,1,4,2

1. Pairs are (3,1) and (4,2)
2. (3,1): Print 1 three times: 1 1 1
3. (4,2): Print 2 four times: 2 2 2 2
4. Resulting sequence/output is 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2

Input

A sequence of positive integers divisible by two. This can be done by parameters, a flat array, an integer stream etc. AS LONG AS there's no nesting or pre-matching of pairs involved.

Output

The resulting sequence as showcased above. Same rules for datatypes as declared in input, keep everything flat.

Test cases

      3, 1, 4, 2 => 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2
            6, 5 => 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5
1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 => 1, 1, 1

Reference Implementation (Ruby, 55 bytes)

f=->a{a.each_slice(2).collect{|x|Array.new *x}.flatten}

Ungolfed:

def g *a
  a.each_slice(2).collect do |x|
    Array.new(x[0], x[1]) 
  end.flatten
end

The first golfer to find a shorter solution in this language gets a -1 bonus.

Scoring

Shortest code in bytes wins.

Answer 23

CAPTCHAs (Cops and Robbers Style)

cops-and-robbers

Cops will write a program that generates a CAPTCHA (either through stdin/stdout or on whatever UI is available to your language using only built-ins).

Robbers will attempt to bypass the generated CAPTCHA programmatically, given access to the Cops' programs' stdin/stdout or UI process/thread (for example, in JavaScript, running on the same document and window).

I need help fleshing this idea out a little more... any suggestions will help.

Answer 24

Create me a Brainf*** assembler

Write a way to convert "human readable" assembly (of any kind) to Brainf***. I.E specify a language "X" (which may already exist or may be your own invention), and create a way to map each valid program to a valid Brainf*** program. This is a popularity-contest so the most convenient assembler as evidenced by upvotes wins!

Answer 25

King of the golf course

Write a program that golfs Brainf*** programs. Similar to code-golf challenges on this site, you will be racing against the clock, and the byte count to maximize glory (reputation). Each program will be invoked with a series of command line arguments in this form

in out in out in out

Each program then has 1000 milliseconds to write a valid brainf*** program to botName.txt. This brainf*** program will take in a null terminated input from stdin and output the respective output according to the table. The code which writes the shortest programs as evidenced by the shortest of 5 runs (or more) will be crowned the winner with a green checkmark. Please note that my languages I support is limited and I may have to download the interpeter. I will have to disqualify non-free interpreters unless volunteers already possessing the interpereter/compiler are willing to help out.

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Rules

1. You may assume that anywhere from 15-30 in and out pairs will be provided.
2. You may assume that inputs and outputs are valid english words from Random House Dictionary
3. You may assume a non wrapping brainf*** implementation with byte values for cells and a tape size of no less than 30k cells
4. The outputted bf programs may be of any length, but your submission may be no more than 10 kilobytes long (to prevent hardcoding)
5. Invalid submissions will result in immediate disqualification until a bug patch is uploaded

meta-golfbrainfck natural-language code-challenge

Answer 26

Expand constants in a Brainfuck program

code-golf metagolf kolmogorov-complexity code-generation brainfuck

Introduction

When golfing in Brainfuck, Fred can never remember the shortest way to write any given constant, and looking it up takes too much time! Luckily, Fred remembered that PPCG can help! In this challenge, you'll need to convert base-10 numerals their Brainfuck representations.

Challenge

Write a program or function that takes a string of Brainfuck code containing some numbers, like this:

72.>105.>33.

and transforms each number into one of its Brainfuck representations, giving (for example) this:

-[>+<-------]>-.>+[->-[<]>--]>.>>-[-[-<]>>+<]>.

Because Fred has not yet learned the secrets of Ctrl+C Ctrl+V, your code must be as small as possible to save Fred some valuable typing. Fred also wants to win code-golf contests with the output, so the code you generate must also be as small as possible.

Specification

• Standard loopholes are forbidden; in particular, you cannot scrape http://esolangs.org/wiki/Brainfuck_constants (or any other site for that matter).
• Your program or function may perform I/O through any of the default I/O methods.
• Assume a wrapping implementation with 1-byte cells (i.e. -. gives ÿ (255)).
• There will never be a number greater than 255 or less than 0 in the input (but you do have to handle 0 correctly!). Your program/function must handle all numbers 0-255 (inclusive).
• You may assume that there are as many temporary cells as necessary to the right of the pointer location (but not the left).
• You may assume that the cell where a number will go and all temporary cells are set to 0.
• When substituting a number, the pointer must end at the cell with the number. All temporary cells must be reset to 0.
• You may assume that there will never be any non-Brainfuck, non-digit characters in the input, and that the input will never be empty (i.e. the input will match /^[,\.\[\]+\-<>0-9]+$/).

Test Cases

The test cases given below are the output for a program/function using the shortest "wrapping" version of the constants at http://esolangs.org/wiki/Brainfuck_constants.

Input
Output
Brainfuck program's output

72.>105.>33.
-[>+<-------]>-.>+[->-[<]>--]>.>>-[-[-<]>>+<]>.
Hi!

255>10++>65>255<+[-<+]->[-+[->+]-<.+[-<+]->]
->++++++++++++>>+[+[<]>>+<+]>>-<+[-<+]->[-+[->+]-<.+[-<+]->]
AAAAAAAAAAAA

>0>48-->255<[>>86.[-]+[-<+]-<-]
>>-[>+<-----]>----->-<[>>-[>+<---]>+.[-]+[-<+]-<-]
VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV

>,[>,]<[<]>[.>]
>,[>,]<[<]>[.>]
(cat - outputs the input)

Scoring

Your score is your byte count plus the average length of your program/function's output for each number. For example, if a 30 byte program's output had an average length of 13.5, its score would be 30 + 13.5 = 43.5.

Helpful Hints

• http://esolangs.org/wiki/Brainfuck_constants

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Sandbox Questions

Is it tagged correctly? Should this be code-challenge instead of code-golf metagolf?

Answer 27

Convert hexagonal coordinates to index

Your job is to, given the size of the hexagon and a pair of axial coordinates, return the index as if all the rows were laid out side by side.

Here's an example mapping for size 3:

(q,r), 3

       (0,0) (1,0) (2,0)
    (-1,1) (0,1) (1,1) (2,1)
(-2,2) (-1,2) (0,2) (1,2) (2,2)
   (-2,3) (-1,3) (0,3) (1,3)
      (-2,4) (-1,4) (0,4)

maps to

    00 01 02
  03 04 05 06
07 08 09 10 11
 12 13 14 15
  16 17 18

Here's the formula I found (could be improved):

i=index
s=size

i = q + sum( ( 2 * s - 0.5 - abs( x - s + 0.5 ) ) for x in 1..r )

Test cases (0-based indexing):

(q, r, s) -> i

(0, 0, 1)  -> 0
(0, 0, 50) -> 0
(0, 3, 3)  -> 14
(-3, 5, 4) -> 28
(5, 2, 12) -> 18

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Meta notes:

• Should I include links to axial coordinates and centered hexagonal numbers?
  • Or, instead, should I explain axial coordinates better?
• Should I include the formula I came up with?
• More test cases, or are those fine?
• More exposition?
• I'm also planning to do a challenge the other way around, is that ok?

Answer 28

Rules

• Your program must take no input and print this text.
• You can have trailing newlines, and spaces after lines.
• You must not use a builtin or load the text for an external resource.

Score

This is code-golf, shortest answer in bytes wins.

Did you guess what was the text?

Answer 29

Your task is to print the Champernowne constant (A033307) indefinitely.

There must be no spaces in your output and the solution with the fewest bytes wins!

Answer 30

Point Triangulation

(title suggestions welcome)

code-golf geometry

Triangulation has been used for hundreds of years for land mapping and cartography, until the widespread proliferation of satellite positioning systems. Essentially, if you know two fixed points, A and B, you can uniquely describe a third point C by describing the angles BAC and ABC (the angle-side-angle postulate). The challenge here will be to solve for C.

Input

• Two rays (half-lines) of the form [(a point in x,y coordinates), (a direction in degrees or radians)] in any convenient format.
• The input angle will be relative to the Cartesian plane, i.e., an input of 0 degrees will have the ray parallel to the x axis and pointing toward x=+inf, and will follow traditional Euclidean convention that the angle increases counter-clockwise (e.g., 90 degrees is "straight up" toward y=+inf, 180 is "straight left" toward x=-inf, etc.).
• Please specify in your description the input format you're using.

Output

• The corresponding third x,y coordinate where the rays intersect, thus forming the triangle.
• If the input will not form a triangle, you can output an error, crash, output nothing, etc., so long as your code terminates. (META - is this too harsh? Should the input be guaranteed to form a triangle?)

Examples

[(1,0,90), (0,1,0)] -> (1,1)
[(1,0,90), (0,0,45)] -> (1,1)
[(1,0,90), (0,1,180)] -> undefined

additional examples forthcoming

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