one-liner wars

games, programming A game popular among hackers who code

in the language APL (see write-only language and linenoise). 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)