4 ms·

Why you should learn brainfuck (or: learn you a brainfuck for great good)

7 points by skilldrick 16y ago

schwabacher 16y ago
This looks awesome, but god damn it! My todo list of things to play around with is growing faster than I can get to them.
- skilldrick 16y ago
  Cheers :) Just give it half an hour...
radq 16y ago
There's a really cool program that will convert programs written in an assembly-like language to brainfuck code. http://inshame.blogspot.com/search/label/My%20Progs%3A%20FuckBrainfuck http://inshame.blogspot.com/search/label/My%20Progs%3A%20Fuc... I've been meaning to figure out how the program works, but the source code doesn't have a lot of comments so it isn't going so well.
pedrocr 16y ago
Just went out and wrote a simple interpreter in 65 lines of Ruby. It's pretty slow but seems to be correct. One thing you didn't mention is that the cells are supposed to be bytes, and thus increment and decrement need to be modulo 256. That may not be part of the actual definition but the sample programs I found all relied on it. I also found it pretty funny that "apt-cache search brainfuck" returns a total of 3 interpreters in the Debian archive.
- skilldrick 16y ago
  Yeah, you're right about the cells usually being bytes. I followed the "spec" far enough for it to be a compliant implementation, but its fairly quick-and-dirty, and will probably break on more advanced programs.
yuvadam 16y ago
Worth mentioning that the intent of brainfuck was to create a language with the smallest possible compiler. Wikipedia claims [1] that most brainfuck compilers are < 200 bytes. [1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck
- skilldrick 16y ago
  Yes, I nearly put that in, but it didn't feel right. I've only given a very basic introduction to the language - the purpose of the blog was to teach the language rather than give its history. Not quite - "Several brainfuck compilers have been made smaller than 200 bytes." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck
- skilldrick 16y ago
  I added this to the post in the end - on reflection I think you're right that it's worth mentioning.

7 points by skilldrick 16y ago

This looks awesome, but god damn it! My todo list of things to play around with is growing faster than I can get to them.

skilldrick 16y ago
Cheers :) Just give it half an hour...

radq 16y ago

There's a really cool program that will convert programs written in an assembly-like language to brainfuck code. http://inshame.blogspot.com/search/label/My%20Progs%3A%20FuckBrainfuck http://inshame.blogspot.com/search/label/My%20Progs%3A%20Fuc... I've been meaning to figure out how the program works, but the source code doesn't have a lot of comments so it isn't going so well.

pedrocr 16y ago

Just went out and wrote a simple interpreter in 65 lines of Ruby. It's pretty slow but seems to be correct. One thing you didn't mention is that the cells are supposed to be bytes, and thus increment and decrement need to be modulo 256. That may not be part of the actual definition but the sample programs I found all relied on it. I also found it pretty funny that "apt-cache search brainfuck" returns a total of 3 interpreters in the Debian archive.

skilldrick 16y ago
Yeah, you're right about the cells usually being bytes. I followed the "spec" far enough for it to be a compliant implementation, but its fairly quick-and-dirty, and will probably break on more advanced programs.

yuvadam 16y ago

Worth mentioning that the intent of brainfuck was to create a language with the smallest possible compiler. Wikipedia claims [1] that most brainfuck compilers are < 200 bytes. [1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck

skilldrick 16y ago
Yes, I nearly put that in, but it didn't feel right. I've only given a very basic introduction to the language - the purpose of the blog was to teach the language rather than give its history. Not quite - "Several brainfuck compilers have been made smaller than 200 bytes." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck
skilldrick 16y ago
I added this to the post in the end - on reflection I think you're right that it's worth mentioning.