On Sun, 27 Oct 2002, Phil Carmody wrote:
> > And there are no general programs to analyze general programs, so
> > whatever rules you specify, it will have cracks.
>
> Except if you add an artificial upper bound. Say 10 of each letter/number,
> and 20 of each punctuation character. I'm not saying it's a good idea, but
> it might just work (at all, that is, not well).
Maybe the trick would be to do things just like the French literary group
Oulipo does: use constraints in writing.
For the moment, the constraint was to be as short as possible. But there
are many others :
- do not use a '$'
- write the sorter program using no alphanumerics
- alternate vowels and consons
- write a palindromic program that passes so that reversed program
solves a completely different problem
- write a program that is exactlty 'n' character long
- ...
The main problem with these constraints is to score the resulting program.
--
Philippe "BooK" Bruhat
All life affects us... even that which is far from our gaze.
(Moral from Groo The Wanderer #59 (Epic))
