one-liner wars

one-liner wars
 n.

   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{}.|T)/T<-iN

   Here's a {Perl} program that prints primes:

        perl -wle '(1 x $_) !~ /^(11+)\1+$/ && print while ++ $_'

   In the Perl world this game is sometimes called Perl Golf because the
   player with the fewest (key)strokes wins.
    

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)