one-liner wars
<games, programming> A game popular among hackers who code in the
language APL (see write-only language and line noise). The objective is to see
who can code the most interesting and/or useful routine in one line of operators
chosen from APL's exceedingly hairy primitive set. A similar amusement was
practiced among TECO hackers and is now popular among Perl aficionados.
Ken Iverson, the inventor of APL, has been credited with a one-liner that, given
a number N, produces a list of the prime numbers from 1 to N inclusive. It looks
like this:
(2 = 0 +.= T o.| T) / T <- iN
where "o" is the APL null character, the assignment arrow is a single
character, and "i" represents the APL iota.
[Jargon File]
(2000-03-19)
Nearby terms:
Ondine « one-banana problem « one-line fix « one-liner
wars » ones complement » One-Time Password » One Time
Programmable Read-Only Memory
