one-liner wars

You are here: irt.org | FOLDOC | one-liner wars

<games, programming> A game popular among hackers who code in the language APL (see write-only language and line noise). The objective is to see who can code the most interesting and/or useful routine in one line of operators chosen from APL's exceedingly hairy primitive set. A similar amusement was practiced among TECO hackers and is now popular among Perl aficionados.

Ken Iverson, the inventor of APL, has been credited with a one-liner that, given a number N, produces a list of the prime numbers from 1 to N inclusive. It looks like this:

  (2 = 0 +.= T o.| T) / T <- iN

where "o" is the APL null character, the assignment arrow is a single character, and "i" represents the APL iota.

[Jargon File]

(2000-03-19)

Nearby terms: one-banana problem « one-dimensional array « one-line fix « one-liner wars » ones complement » One-Time Password » One Time Programmable Read-Only Memory

FOLDOC, Topics, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z, ?, ALL