Thankyou to Dave and Jerome for running the game and for their invitation to explain some of my weird entries.
The fwp old-hands may have yawned at my 7918-stroke entry, but I hope it caused at least a few fwp newbies to remark "What the hell is that?" or "How the hell does that work?". Let me start at the beginning. About six months ago, as a fwp beginner, I used to provoke the fwp maestros with outrageous statements like: "It is impossible to write a JAPH that writes to stdout without using at least one alphanumeric character." http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/msg00218.html Ronald J Kimball happened to take that bait and responded with: http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/msg00221.html Around that time, I was also profoundly impressed with this post by Japhy: http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/msg00158.html Not to mention falling on the floor laughing at Damian Conway's Acme::Bleach module. Plus, I was looking to improve my Perl skills, and therefore eager to write a CPAN module. Having seen some camel-shaped JAPHs, and Acme::Bleach and Acme::Smirch, I realised that I could generalise Ronald's and Japhy's posts to produce a module that converted any program into any shape! All I needed was an encoding scheme to convert ASCII to 'sightly' and back again, where 'sightly' is defined as the following 32 characters: ! " # $ % & ' ( ) * + , - . / (33-47) : ; < = > ? @ (58-64) [ \ ] ^ _ ` (91-96) { | } ~ (123-126) I call it 'sightly' because it lacks any unsightly letters or numbers. Essentially, each alphanumeric character can be produced by a bit operation between two sightly characters. For example, the letter 'A' can be produced with: '`'^'!'. Now, if you can produce every alphanumeric in this way, you can join them into a string with the '.' operator, then eval that string. Now, since a program is just a string, the problem is solved. There is one annoyance, however: 'eval' itself is four unsightly alphabetic characters. What to do? The answer lies in Japhy's post: use ''=~ in harness with (?{...}) to eval the code inside a regular expression. What I did not know at the time, however, is that Perl's regex engine is not re-entrant, so there are some limitations to this approach (discussed further below). Thus was born Acme::EyeDrops: http://search.cpan.org/search?dist=Acme-EyeDrops Lacking the natural bit twiddling abilities of a Keith Ivey, I wrote several brute force programs to find all the required bit operations for the ascii-to-sightly encoding. The interested reader can find the details of the encoding scheme in the first page of EyeDrops.pm (ascii_to_sightly/sightly_to_ascii functions). As it turns out, the encoding scheme is only about 100 lines of code, while the shape-pouring code is much longer. To pour into a shape exactly, some heuristics are needed, such as converting '`' to "\`" to increase the length by one to fit. As pointed out in the EyeDrops documentation, you can convert even quite complex programs -- but at the cost of a leading unsightly eval. For the TPR solution, however, I did not want an unsightly eval, so my first task was to solve the problem without using $_ and without using regular expressions. After a while, I came up with k.pl: $y=pop;$r+=(ord$x>60?-55+ord$x:$x)*36**$f++while(($x=chop$y)ne""); print$r.$/ Now, this is not optimal, but it does not need to be because it is to be poured into a giant banner of "The Perl Review", which I did on a Linux box (need the Linux banner command) as follows: cd Acme-EyeDrops-1.05/demo ../sightly.pl -r -f k.pl -s banner -c "The Perl Review" -w 70 >n.pl producing: ''=~("\(". '?'."\{".( '`'|'%').( "\["^ '-' ). +( '`' |+ '!' ). ((( (( '`'))))|',').'"'.'\\'.'$'.('['^'"').'='.('['^'+') .('`'|'/').('['^'+').';'.'\\'.'$'.('['^')')."\+". '='.'('.('`'|'/').('['^')').('`'|'$').'\\'."\$".( '['^'#').'>'.('^'^('`'|'(')).('^'^('`'|'.')).'?'. '-' .( '^' ^( (( (( (( '`' ))))) )|"\+")).( '^'^("\`"| '+' )) .(( (( '+')))).('`'|'/').('['^')').('`'|'$').'\\'."\$".( '['^'#').':'.'\\'.'$'.('['^'#').')'.'*'.('^'^('`' |'-')).('^'^('`'|'(')).'*'.'*'.'\\'.'$'.('`'|'&') .'+'.'+'.('['^',').('`'|'(').('`'|')').('`'|','). ((( (( (( '`') )))) )|(( '%' ))).+ '('.'('.'\\'.'$'.('['^('#')). '='.('`'|'#').('`'|'(').('`'| '/').('['^'+').'\\'.('$').( '['^'"').')'.('`'|"\.").( '`' |'%').''. '\\'."\"".'\\'. '"'.')'.';'.(('[')^ '+').('['^')').('`'|')' ).('`'| (( '.'))) .''. +( '['^ '/' ). ((( ((( (( (( ((( (( (( ((( (( (( (( (( ((( (( (( '\\' )) )) )))))) ))) )))))))))))) )) )))))))).+ '$'.('[' ^(( (( ')' )) ))) .+ '.'.'\\'.'$'.'/'.('!'^'+').'"'.'}'.')');$:=('.')^ '~';$~='@'|'(';$^=')'^'[';$/='`'|'.';$_='('^"\}"; $,='`'|'!';$\=')'^'}';$:='.'^'~';$~='@'|('(');$^= ')'^'[';$/='`'|'.';$_='('^'}';$,='`'|'!';$\="\)"^ '}' ;( $: )=( (( (( '.' )) )) )^ (( (( (( (( (( '~' ))) ))) )))) ;$~= '@' |'('; ($^)= ')'^'[' ;$/='`' |'.';$_='('^'}';$, ='`'|'!';$\=')'^ '}';$:=('.')^ "\~";$~= '@'|"\("; $^=')'^"\[";$/= '`'|'.';$_='('^'}'; $,='`'|'!';$\=')'^"\}"; $:='.'^ (( '~')); ($~) =( '@') |(( (( '(' ))) ); $^ =(( (( (( ')' )) )) )) ^+ '[' ;( $/ )=(( (( (( '`'))) ))) |'.';$_='('^ (( "\}"));$,= '`'|'!'; $\= (( ')' )) ^'}';$:='.'^'~';$~='@'|'(';$^ =')'^'[';$/='`'|'.';$_=('(')^ '}';$,='`'|'!';$\=')'^'}';$:= '.'^'~';$~='@'|'(';$^=')'^'[' ;$/ =(( '`' ))| '.'; ($_)= '('^"\}"; $,='`'|'!' ;$\=(')')^ ('}');$:= '.'^ '~' ;( $~) =( '@')|'(';$^=')'^'[';$/='`'|'.';$_='('^'}';$,='`'| '!';$\=')'^'}';$:='.'^'~';$~='@'|'(';$^=')'^"\["; $/='`'|'.';$_='('^'}';$,='`'|'!';$\=')'^('}');$:= '.'^'~';$~='@'|'(';$^=')'^'[';$/='`'|'.';$_="\("^ '}' ;$, =( '`' )| '!' ;( $\)=')'^'}';$:='.'^'~';$~='@'|'(';$^=')'^"\[";$/= '`'|'.';$_='('^'}';$,='`'|'!';$\=')'^'}';$:="\."^ '~';$~='@'|'(';$^=')'^'[';$/='`'|'.';$_='('^"\}"; $,='`'|'!';$\=')'^'}';$:='.'^'~';$~='@'|('(');$^= ')' ^'[' ;( $/) =('`')| (( '.' ));$_='(' ^+ '}';$,="\`"| (( '!'));$\=(')')^ (( '}'));$:='.'^"\~"; $~ =(( '@'))|'(';$^=')' ^(( '[' )); $/='`'|('.');$_= '(' ^'}' ;$,='`'|'!';$\=')' ^'}' ;$: ='.'^'~';$~='@' |'('; ($^)= ')'^"\[";$/= '`'|'.' ;$_='(' ^('}');$,= '`'|'!';$\=')'^'}' ;$:='.' ^'~';$~='@'|'('; ($^)= ')'^('[');$/= '`' |'.';$_= '(' ^"\}";$,= '`'|'!';$\=')'^ '}';$:='.'^"\~";$~= '@'|'(';$^=')'^"\[";$/= '`'|'.' ;( ($_))= '('^ (( '}') );( $, )=( '`' )| (( '!' )) ;( $\) =( (( (( (( ')' )) )) )))^ (( (( '}'))) );( $:)='.'^'~'; $~ ='@'|"\("; $^="\)"^ (( (( '[')) ));$/='`'| '.';$_=('(')^ '}';$,='`'|'!';$\ =')'^'}';$:="\."^ (( '~'));$~='@'|'('; $^=')'^'[';$/='`' |'.';$_="\("^ '}';$, ="\`"| '!';$\= ')'^'}' ;( $:)='.' ^(( (( '~' )) )); $~ =(( '@'))|'(';$^=')'^'[';$/="\`"| '.';$_ ='('^'}';$,='`'|'!';$\=(')')^ "\}";$:= '.'^'~';$~='@'|'(';$^=')'^'[' ;($/)= '`'|'.';$_='('^'}';$,='`'|'!' ;$\ =(( ')'))^'}' ;$:='.'^'~';$~= '@'|'(';$^=')'^'['; $/='`'|'.';$_='('^"\}"; $,='`'| (( '!')); ($\) =( ')') ^(( (( '}' ))) ); $: =(( (( (( '.' )) )) )) ^+ '~' ;( $~ )=(( (( (( '@'))) ))) |'(';$^=')'^ (( "\["));$/= '`'|'.'; $_ =( '(')^ '}';$,='`' |'!';$\="\)"^ '}';$:='.'^'~';$~ ='@'|'(';$^="\)"^ (( '['));$/='`'|'.'; $_='('^'}';$,='`' |'!';$\="\)"^ '}';$: =('.')^ '~';$~='@'|'('; $^=')'^'[';$/='`' |'.';$_="\("^ '}';$, ="\`"| '!';$\= ')'^'}' ;( $:)="\."^ "\~"; #; #; /-\ndrew
