::: Area #157 (comp.sys.acorn.programmer)
Message: #28291 (Read 10 times, has 0 replies, 2028 bytes)
Date   : Sun Feb  1 03:21:54 1998
From   : Steven Singer of fidonet#2:254/27.2
To     : All
Subject: Re: Basic programming

Nelson Sandalwood (bayliss@ihug.co.nz) wrote:
:  KaB>: > We stopped when we got a clean compile on the following syntax
:  KaB>: >
:  KaB>: > for(;P("\n"),R-;P("|"))for(e=C;e-C);P("_"+(*u++/8)%2))P("|"+(*u/4)%2
:  KaB>: > );

:  KaB>: However, correct me if I am wrong, that's not legal C.

: I think you have all missed the point, if the letter was/is for real then the
: above line of /code/ is supposed to be giberish.  Thats the whole point, that
: they had made C so complex and full of BS that it would actually accept that
: line...

Bzzzt, and thank you for playing. The line is from a real C program, it
has just been mistyped somewhere along its travels (perhaps deliberately,
though I would have thought leaving the line as is would have been
better).  It should be:

for(;P("\n"),R--;P("|"))for(e=C;e--;P("_ "+(*u++/8)%2))P("| "+(*u/4)%2);
		^                  ^     ^                  ^

(The ^s mark the differences).

The original letter was published in an April 1st issue of Computerworld
(I don't know which year), so it's probably been retyped by hand a few
times.

Interestingly enough, I have a copy of the same letter in computer
readable form, and the line quoted in my copy is also wrong, but it's
wrong in different ways:

for(;P("\n"),R=;P("|"))for(e=C;e=;P("_"+(*u++/8)%2))P("| "+(*u/4)%2);
	       ^                 ^     ^

The program this was taken from was the grand prize winner of the 1985
obfuscated C code competition and was written by Carl Shapiro.

See http://reality.sgi.com/csp/ioccc/ for more truly wonderful examples
of C.

	 - Steven

PS. The Newsgroups line of this thread appears to have been truncated
somewhere along the way, but this is probably a good thing.

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