issotm / 1234-golf

Code golfing contest: print "1234"

Hi!

The name's Eldred, Eldred Habert.

I mainly deal with lower-level stuff, and making tools to help others make great stuff out of them. I'm a regular over at gbdev, if you're interested in making a game on a retro platform for fun, this might be worth checking out!

I'm the main maintainer of RGBDS, the main toolchain for programming on the Game Boy. If you're interested in contributing, we have some beginner-friendly tasks!

I have a Game Boy programming tutorial in progress; if you'd be interested in translating it, you can help! Please open an issue to let me know, and we can get started :)

Thanks for stopping by, have fun on the rest of your browsing journey o/

1234-golf's Issues

Ruby (21)

p *% \M-R\cD .unpack(?S)

1234 - C (56 characters)

Here ya go~

Compiles with gcc main.c

// a=argc (1)
main(a)
{
    // b=1, c=4
    // Loop until a == 5
    for(int b=a,c=b+b<<b;a<=c;)

        // c-b<<c  ==  3<<4  ==  48 (ASCII '0')
        // Add a to print its ASCII value
        putchar(c-b<<c|a++);
}

Minimal version:

main(a){for(int b=a,c=b+b<<b;a<=c;)putchar(c-b<<c|a++);}

Rust: 115 Characters

extern { fn putchar(x: usize); } // links to putchar() in libc.

fn main() {
    let x = true as usize;       // x = 1
    let y = x + x + x;           // y = 3
    let z = (y << x + y) + x;    // z = 49
    for c in z..=z + y {         // loop c from 49 (z) to 52 (z + y)
        unsafe { putchar(c); }   // write c to stdout. extern functions are unsafe
    }
}

My dumbass at 1am forgot true existed and I ended up shaving off about 20 characters.
I highly doubt this can get any smaller without a different approach. x could have been reused by making it mutable but that wouldn't affect the character count.

Another C Submission

Saw this from someone I know so I thought I'd try my hand at it, this is what I ended up with:

a,b; // Initialize a/b to 0

main() {
  ++a; // Generate 1
  b = a <<= a + a; // Generate 4 from 1 << 2 or 1 << (1 + 1), store to a/b
  b *= a + a + a; // Generate 48 from 4 * 12 or 4 * (4 + 4 + 4), store to b

  while (a--) // Loop 4 times
    putchar(++b); // Print out characters starting from ASCII 41
}

Which when compacted is 58 characters:
a,b;main(){++a;b=a<<=a+a;b*=a+a+a;while(a--)putchar(++b);}

Note that compiles fine in a C compiler like gcc/clang if one actually tells it the language is C (the online compiler you linked on the project page assumes the code is C++ due to the extension) since types on global variables are not required (unlike in ISO C++ apparently). This can be seen here (also note that this code has no undefined behavior unlike some of the other submissions, only warnings due to the horrid language hacks for default int in various contexts as expected).

If that's not acceptable then this should be fine as 62 characters, but it shouldn't need to be this way in C as mentioned before:
int a,b;main(){++a;b=a<<=a+a;b*=a+a+a;while(a--)putchar(++b);}