Interesting C code

#1

Post by geekzgalore » Fri, Jul 08, 2011, 9:38 AM UTC

Re: Interesting C code

#2

Post by jseban » Fri, Jul 08, 2011, 11:23 AM UTC

Interesting indeed. But weird that he uses obfuscated code when doing a piece of explaining how it's done. Or do people actually write for loops like those? :P

Re: Interesting C code

#3

Post by tintin » Fri, Jul 08, 2011, 11:31 AM UTC

"in six lines of C"

I'm not impressed. It could be done in 1 line of C when he left out the line-breaks.

I don't think obfuscated code is interesting. It's unreadable. And therefore it's hard to learn something from it.

But it's nice he is explaining the code. Now that is interesting!

Re: Interesting C code

#4

Post by xedarius » Fri, Jul 08, 2011, 12:16 PM UTC

'warnings which real programmers ignore' ... That tells me pretty much all I needed to know about that article.

Re: Interesting C code

#5

Post by Kapelson » Fri, Jul 08, 2011, 12:19 PM UTC

tintin wrote: post #3

"in six lines of C" I'm not impressed. It could be done in 1 line of C when he left out the line-breaks. I don't think obfuscated code is interesting. It's unreadable. And therefore it's hard to learn something from it. But it's nice he is explaining the code. Now that is interesting!

I treat obfuscated code as a kind of puzzle. "Given a crazy string of seemingly random semicolons and numbers, can you discover what it does and how it works?" It's like a magic eye puzzle for a programmer.

Re: Interesting C code

#6

Post by Bogdanp » Fri, Jul 08, 2011, 12:36 PM UTC

xedarius wrote: post #4

'warnings which real programmers ignore' ... That tells me pretty much all I needed to know about that article.

I can't speak for the author, but I'm pretty sure that was a joke.

Re: Interesting C code

#7

Post by a3_nm » Fri, Jul 08, 2011, 12:57 PM UTC

xedarius wrote: post #4

'warnings which real programmers ignore' ... That tells me pretty much all I needed to know about that article.

In case you're wondering...

  $ gcc -o yanim yanim.c -lm
  yanim.c:1:1: warning: data definition has no type or storage class [enabled by default]
  yanim.c: In function ‘main’:
  yanim.c:5:24: warning: incompatible implicit declaration of built-in function ‘cos’ [enabled by default]
  yanim.c:5:33: warning: incompatible implicit declaration of built-in function ‘sin’ [enabled by default]

Re: Interesting C code

#8

Post by nadam » Fri, Jul 08, 2011, 1:40 PM UTC

tintin wrote: post #3

"in six lines of C" I'm not impressed. It could be done in 1 line of C when he left out the line-breaks. I don't think obfuscated code is interesting. It's unreadable. And therefore it's hard to learn something from it. But it's nice he is explaining the code. Now that is interesting!

Obfuscation alone is not interesting, but 'code compression' (to achieve something using as few characters as possible) is a very interesting puzzle for the brain I think.

Re: Interesting C code

#9

Post by Martijn » Fri, Jul 08, 2011, 2:22 PM UTC

xedarius wrote: post #4

'warnings which real programmers ignore' ... That tells me pretty much all I needed to know about that article.

Warnings are to be expected if your goal is to make your program as short as possible.

Re: Interesting C code

#10

Post by rcfox » Fri, Jul 08, 2011, 2:28 PM UTC

tintin wrote: post #3

"in six lines of C" I'm not impressed. It could be done in 1 line of C when he left out the line-breaks. I don't think obfuscated code is interesting. It's unreadable. And therefore it's hard to learn something from it. But it's nice he is explaining the code. Now that is interesting!

The code isn't obfuscated; it's golfed. (http://codegolf.com/)

I assume the line-breaks are to allow the code to fit within 80 columns to display on most standard terminals. If you look closely, they occur at places you wouldn't expect them to. I'm guessing they were placed by cat and not the author.