3 ms·

C code is too "random" to produce nice images. You can use the least significant bits to hold some data; Google "steganography" (this is just the most basic).

JonnieCache 16y ago
>C code is too "random" to produce nice images In a world where it is possible to compute a file that contains its own MD5, I wouldn't bet on this. Wish I could find the link, there was some feted programmer who had a friend that bet him such a thing was not possible. He proceeded to write an algorithm that found such a file by brute force. I wouldn't count on the eventual C being pretty though. See also: electronic musicians hiding pictures in their music http://www.bastwood.com/?page_id=10 http://www.bastwood.com/?page_id=10
- JoachimSchipper 16y ago
  You're right: sane C code is too "random" to produce nice images. ;-)
  - JonnieCache 16y ago
    One hacker's insanity is another's pastime. http://www.de.ioccc.org/main.html http://www.de.ioccc.org/main.html
    - JoachimSchipper 16y ago
      Yeah, that's what I thought of too. Has it been done yet?
RodgerTheGreat 16y ago
In Java, source files can contain unicode escapes[1] of the form '\uXXXX' which are expanded prior to tokenization. In effect this gives you several options for what characters can exist in a given "pixel". I think that this, combined with careful application of whitespace and comments, should easily provide enough flexibility to make arbitrary code look roughly like a desired bitmap. [1] http://java.sun.com/docs/books/jls/second_edition/html/lexical.doc.html#100850 http://java.sun.com/docs/books/jls/second_edition/html/lexic...
- JoachimSchipper 16y ago
  Just \uXXXX (or C trigraphs etc) doesn't give you much to play with, and I'd say that selectively tokenizing Java is cheating.
mrcharles 16y ago
Example of a python script in a bitmap: http://www.bluh.org/codemap.bmp http://www.bluh.org/codemap.bmp Ultimately it's never going to be pretty if it's human readable as the range of bytes used will make a lot of greyish tones. C/C++ wouldn't look a lot different I doubt, but if you want you can grab my python script (PIL required) and pack some source files and see for yourself: http://www.github.com/mrcharles/codemap http://www.github.com/mrcharles/codemap (script has some bugs with alignment, but other than that, works)

JonnieCache 16y ago

>C code is too "random" to produce nice images In a world where it is possible to compute a file that contains its own MD5, I wouldn't bet on this. Wish I could find the link, there was some feted programmer who had a friend that bet him such a thing was not possible. He proceeded to write an algorithm that found such a file by brute force. I wouldn't count on the eventual C being pretty though. See also: electronic musicians hiding pictures in their music http://www.bastwood.com/?page_id=10 http://www.bastwood.com/?page_id=10

JoachimSchipper 16y ago
You're right: sane C code is too "random" to produce nice images. ;-)
- JonnieCache 16y ago
  One hacker's insanity is another's pastime. http://www.de.ioccc.org/main.html http://www.de.ioccc.org/main.html
  - JoachimSchipper 16y ago
    Yeah, that's what I thought of too. Has it been done yet?

RodgerTheGreat 16y ago

In Java, source files can contain unicode escapes[1] of the form '\uXXXX' which are expanded prior to tokenization. In effect this gives you several options for what characters can exist in a given "pixel". I think that this, combined with careful application of whitespace and comments, should easily provide enough flexibility to make arbitrary code look roughly like a desired bitmap. [1] http://java.sun.com/docs/books/jls/second_edition/html/lexical.doc.html#100850 http://java.sun.com/docs/books/jls/second_edition/html/lexic...

JoachimSchipper 16y ago
Just \uXXXX (or C trigraphs etc) doesn't give you much to play with, and I'd say that selectively tokenizing Java is cheating.

mrcharles 16y ago

Example of a python script in a bitmap: http://www.bluh.org/codemap.bmp http://www.bluh.org/codemap.bmp Ultimately it's never going to be pretty if it's human readable as the range of bytes used will make a lot of greyish tones. C/C++ wouldn't look a lot different I doubt, but if you want you can grab my python script (PIL required) and pack some source files and see for yourself: http://www.github.com/mrcharles/codemap http://www.github.com/mrcharles/codemap (script has some bugs with alignment, but other than that, works)