4 ms·

I love this footnote so much: > This feature does enable a neat quine: the Perl program “Illegal division by zero at /tmp/quine.pl line 1.”, when saved in the

by puls 8y ago

I love this footnote so much: > This feature does enable a neat quine: the Perl program “Illegal division by zero at /tmp/quine.pl line 1.”, when saved in the appropriate location, outputs “Illegal division by zero at /tmp/quine.pl line 1.” The reason for this behavior is left as an exercise for the reader.

275qaz 8y ago
It's trying to divide "Illegal division by zero at /" by "tmp/quine.pl line 1." and "tmp/quine.pl line 1." evaluates to 0?
- benj111 8y ago
  Or "quine.pl line 1." Evaluates to 0? Or should that be 0.0???
  - yellowapple 8y ago
    Yeah, I think it's both divisions. Both 'perl -e "in /tmp"' and 'perl -e "tmp/quine"' result in the same division-by-zero error.
- barthold 8y ago
  I think it's equivalent to something like Illegal::division(by::zero(at/tmp/quine . pl::line(1.)))
- fanf2 8y ago
  It is slightly more complicated than that :-) https://fanf.dreamwidth.org/131318.html https://fanf.dreamwidth.org/131318.html the actual parse is division->Illegal( zero->by( ((“at” / “tmp”) / “quine”) . line->pl(1.0) ))
nanis 8y ago
$ perl -MO=Deparse -e "Illegal division by zero at /tmp/quine.pl line 1." 'division'->Illegal('zero'->by('at' / 'tmp' / 'quine' . line'->pl(1))); -e syntax OK
intuitionist 8y ago
The part that left my office in stitches: > (To be fair to Perl, when perl is run with the -w flag to enable warnings, it does helpfully inform the user that at some point in the future, the Perl developers will most likely pick gggijgziifiiffif as a new reserved word: >> Unquoted string "gggijgziifiiffif" may clash with future reserved word at - line 1.)
- sitkack 7y ago
  Knowing Larry, I believe he is currently working on a patch.
  - rurban 7y ago
    Larry left perl5 about 15 years ago, and nobody every will reserve random keywords like this. Keywords are very problematic in perl5 and are not needed all. You can add random new keywords at runtime, and you can add methods doing almost everything, like accepting blocks or functions, implementing most control structures.
HocusLocus 8y ago
> This feature does enable a neat quine: the Perl program “Illegal division by zero at /tmp/quine.pl line 1.”, when saved in the appropriate location, outputs “Illegal division by zero at /tmp/quine.pl line 1.” The reason for this behavior is left as an exercise for the reader. For quines, see the chapter "Air on G's String", a dialogue between Achilles and the Tortoise in Douglas Hofstadter's book GODEL,ESCHER,BACH: AN ETERNAL GOLDEN BRAID.

by puls 8y ago

275qaz 8y ago

It's trying to divide "Illegal division by zero at /" by "tmp/quine.pl line 1." and "tmp/quine.pl line 1." evaluates to 0?

benj111 8y ago
Or "quine.pl line 1." Evaluates to 0? Or should that be 0.0???
- yellowapple 8y ago
  Yeah, I think it's both divisions. Both 'perl -e "in /tmp"' and 'perl -e "tmp/quine"' result in the same division-by-zero error.
barthold 8y ago
I think it's equivalent to something like Illegal::division(by::zero(at/tmp/quine . pl::line(1.)))
fanf2 8y ago
It is slightly more complicated than that :-) https://fanf.dreamwidth.org/131318.html https://fanf.dreamwidth.org/131318.html the actual parse is division->Illegal( zero->by( ((“at” / “tmp”) / “quine”) . line->pl(1.0) ))

nanis 8y ago

$ perl -MO=Deparse -e "Illegal division by zero at /tmp/quine.pl line 1." 'division'->Illegal('zero'->by('at' / 'tmp' / 'quine' . line'->pl(1))); -e syntax OK

intuitionist 8y ago

The part that left my office in stitches: > (To be fair to Perl, when perl is run with the -w flag to enable warnings, it does helpfully inform the user that at some point in the future, the Perl developers will most likely pick gggijgziifiiffif as a new reserved word: >> Unquoted string "gggijgziifiiffif" may clash with future reserved word at - line 1.)

sitkack 7y ago
Knowing Larry, I believe he is currently working on a patch.
- rurban 7y ago
  Larry left perl5 about 15 years ago, and nobody every will reserve random keywords like this. Keywords are very problematic in perl5 and are not needed all. You can add random new keywords at runtime, and you can add methods doing almost everything, like accepting blocks or functions, implementing most control structures.

HocusLocus 8y ago

> This feature does enable a neat quine: the Perl program “Illegal division by zero at /tmp/quine.pl line 1.”, when saved in the appropriate location, outputs “Illegal division by zero at /tmp/quine.pl line 1.” The reason for this behavior is left as an exercise for the reader. For quines, see the chapter "Air on G's String", a dialogue between Achilles and the Tortoise in Douglas Hofstadter's book GODEL,ESCHER,BACH: AN ETERNAL GOLDEN BRAID.