learn-tilde-ath

Latest Posts by learn-tilde-ath

Two questions: 1: did you actually make ~ATH, and 2: what was that Sburb text-game that you mentioned on an ask on another blog

While I was back in highschool (iirc?) I made a thing which I titled “drocta ~ATH”, which is a programming language with the design goals of:

1: being actually possible to implement, (and therefore, for example, not having things be tied to the lifespans of external things)

2: being Turing complete, and accept user input and produce output for the user to read, such that in principle one could write useful programs in it (though it is not meant to be practical to do so).

3: matching how ~ATH is depicted in the comic, as closely as I can, with as little as possible that I don’t have some justification for based on what is shown in the comic (plus the navigation page for the comic, which depicts a “SPLIT” command). For example, I avoid assuming that the language has any built-in concept of numbers, because the comic doesn’t depict any, and I don’t need to assume it does, provided I make some reasonable assumptions about what BIFURCATE (and SPLIT) do, and also assume that the BIFURCATE command can also be done in reverse.

However, I try to always make a distinction between “drocta ~ATH”, which is a real thing I made, and “~ATH”, which is a fictional programming language in which it is possible to write programs that e.g. wait until the author’s death and the run some code, or implement some sort of curse that involves the circumstantial simultaneous death of two universes.

In addition, please be aware that the code quality of my interpreter for drocta ~ATH, is very bad! It does not use a proper parser or the like, and, iirc (it has probably been around a decade since I made any serious edits to the code, so I might recall wrong), it uses the actual line numbers of the file for the control flow? (Also, iirc, the code was written for python 2.7 rather than for python 3.) At some point I started a rewrite of the interpreter (keeping the language the same, except possibly fixing bugs), but did not get very far.

If, impossibly, I got some extra time I wouldn’t otherwise have that somehow could only be used for the task of working on drocta ~ATH related stuff, I would be happy to complete that rewrite, and do it properly, but as time has gone on, it seems less likely that I will complete the rewrite.

I am pleased that all these years later, I still get the occasional message asking about drocta ~ATH, and remain happy to answer any questions about it! I enjoy that people still think the idea is interesting.

(If someone wanted to work with me to do the rewrite, that might provide me the provided motivation to do the rewrite, maybe? No promises though. I somewhat doubt that anyone would be interested in doing such a collaboration though.)

Regarding the text based SBURB game, I assume I was talking about “The Overseer Project”. It was very cool.

Thank you for your questions. I hope this answers it to your satisfaction.

@ karkathateseveryonesposts

Anon in that ask was me, not rping as you say but what I meant from computer-exploding code is I was unsure if ~ATH was supposed to crash once running a code like Sollux's.  Also, there couldn't be a syntax error as the program crashes if I press enter with no code on it yet.

Ah! My apologies for my misunderstanding, I interpreted the reference to computer exploding scripts combined with your handle to [ justification for why I misinterpreted snipped for brevity].

You don’t type the script in when you run the program. You need to first save the script as a seperate file, and then when you run the interpreter, type in the filename.

The last bit of the interpreter says like

filename=raw_input() filelink=open(filename,'r') script=filelink.read(-1) result_obj=evalScript(script,NULL_obj) raw_input("press enter to close")

I probably should have made it more clearly ask for a file name instead of just having a prompt with no explanation.

(also, wow, this reminds me that this code was written in python 2.7 and not python 3. Maybe I should update it to use python 3? There’s also many other things about it that ought to be improved but it isn’t high on my priorities..)

My ~ATH keeps crashing whenever I run a non-computer exploding code, or if I press enter. Why is this?

Based on the username which recently followed this blog at the same time as I received this ask (which I won't say what it was because you asked this on anon, and haven't received permission), I'd guess that you may be running a different version of ~ATH than the one I document here :P

Unfortunately, I don't have a specification for the version you have.

If you have such a specification, or the executable for it, I'd be happy to take a look if you could send it to me, haha.

If on the off chance you are using the version I document here, then presumably you have a syntax error or something in your code?

My ~ATH keeps crashing whenever I run a non-computer exploding code, or if I press enter. Why is this?

Based on the username which recently followed this blog at the same time as I received this ask (which I won't say what it was because you asked this on anon, and haven't received permission), I'd guess that you may be running a different version of ~ATH than the one I document here :P

Unfortunately, I don't have a specification for the version you have.

If you have such a specification, or the executable for it, I'd be happy to take a look if you could send it to me, haha.

If on the off chance you are using the version I document here, then presumably you have a syntax error or something in your code?

yeah, can i make ~ATH continue to generate variables? like if one part of the program dies it generates another variable? because i've been trying to do that lmfao

Hi. Not sure what you mean by continue to generate variables. If you mean like how in lisp you can like, automatically generate a new variable name and then use that variable name, then no, drocta ~ATH doesn't have a feature like that, but I'm guessing that's not what you mean.

Variables are just like, names in your program. If you want more objects, you can just continue bifurcating objects to get more objects.

drocta ~ATH does not support parallelism or concurrency or whatever (though presumably canonical ~ATH would, in some sense. At least, it appears to handle circumstantial simultaneity.), So, if you are referring to drocta ~ATH, then I'm not sure what you mean when you refer to part of the program dying. Though, given that in canonical ~ATH, there is the expression

[THIS,THIS].DIE();

then it seems like, presumably, it should be possible to have something like

THIS.DIE();

in order to describe part of the program dying (ending), without another part doing so.

But, again, drocta ~ATH does not support anything like that. Feel free to make a fork of it which does though. Please let me know if you do!

Happy 10/25

Today is the 10 year anniversary of the destruction of the universe frog. Such an occasion is traditionally celebrated by destroying the universe.

okay, this might be a liiittle specific, and more HS oriented, but still. can you power a First Guardian using ~ATH? and if so, what are some ways?

This is a slightly off of the usual topic of this blog, which is more about a language which I made up and is based on and named after the language in the comic, and attempts to be as close to the comic while still being possible to implement and use, (the language in the comic is not particularly well documented), but I’ll answer it to the best of my abilities.

I’m not sure what you mean by “power”.

“Can I write a first guardian character that has some of their behavior be based on ~ATH in some ways?” : I don’t see any reason why not. If you can do ectobiology with a puppet and a cueball, why not with a computer running a program?

“Can I make a first guardian character who is a first guardian because of the continual execution of a ~ATH script?” : While you can of course write whatever you want, I’m not sure that this is consistent with what is said in acts 1-7 (I have chosen to disregard everything after act 7) about first guardians. It seems like an entity either is or is not a first guardian, and that this fact is established at the time of that entity’s creation. It seems to me like what happens with first guardians is: using ectobiology, the genetic code from some players’ subconscious-or-whatever is combined with some other source(s), and the result is a first guardian.

Oh, I suppose if you just mean “an entity has the powers of a first guardian as a result of a ~ATH script”, then, uh, I guess that doesn’t contradict anything. How would I depict such a script? Well, I don’t know that anything that we’ve seen of the language gives any particularly clear direction for what such a script would look like. If you want it to just have the keywords we’ve seen, possibly re-interpreted to mean something different, I guess one idea could be to like, say bifurcate an existing first guardian into parts with names that seem relevant, and also whatever entity is to have the abilities of a first guardian, and then like, un-bifurcate (unbifurcation is not something shown in the comic, but is something I’ve added to my language, in order to make it usable) the other entity, but with some component of the first guardian mixed in somehow? Though if you did that, you would probably want to justify why, if ~ATH can do that that easily, why it doesn’t happen all the time.

There is very little in terms of rules that the story gives for how ~ATH behaves. If you want to have a ~ATH script “power” a first guardian, just make up some stuff. If you want to depict the actual script, then look at all the pages of the comic that depict code from it, see what it says they do, and just make something up that seems to aesthetically fit.

The language that I have defined (”drocta ~ath”) does not provide any means of doing this, because the language I designed was designed to technically be usable, while also resembling the language in the comic.

I suppose that, as all first guardians get their power from the green sun, and the green sun was created by the circumstantially simultaneous destruction of, uh, either universes A and B, or specifically of A2 and B1, not sure which, and this was in some ways tied to the Möbius Double Reacharoud virus, you could argue that all first guardians get their powers from, something somewhat connected to a ~ATH script.

Why can’t I add tags to an answer to an ask?

How do you use this?

Just to be super clear, though you probably understand this, “drocta ~ath” is not for practical purpose. It is purely an amusement.

That being said, to run this, you need to have python 2 installed. (Yes, currently most new python projects are in python 3. Unfortunately I haven’t gotten around to making any of the updates I’ve wanted to on this project, and it has been years since I’ve worked on it.)

To run it: download the github repository from https://github.com/drocta/TILDE-ATH

then, (probably from the command line, though running it in other ways may also work) navigate into the folder where you put all those files, use python 2 in order to run interp_2.py  . [1] Then, it will allow you to type something in. It would be good if it gave some sort of prompt saying that it is accepting input, but it currently does not. What you have to type in is the file name of the drocta ~ath program that you want to run.

for example, you might type:

python interp_2.py looptest.~ATH

in order to run the program looptest.~ATH , and then you would see the output:that alternates between “APPLE” and “ORANGE” a number of times (like, 5 times I think).

If it isn’t working for you, let me know and I can try and help you troubleshoot what’s going on.

If you are asking, not “how do I run the programs in this language” but “how do I write programs in this language”, uh, read through the rest of this blog I guess. It isn’t complete, but the point of this blog was meant to be a tutorial for how the language works. If you have any particular questions about how to do a particular thing in the language, then ask that. But I don’t currently have time to re-do the whole project of this blog and put a tutorial for the language as a whole in one response to an ask.

P.S. I am currently in grad school for math (I made this language while in high school). I haven’t been doing all that much programming lately unfortunately.

([1] What’s that? “interp_2.py” is a weird name for the main file? Indeed it is. Originally I had “interp.py” and then before I started using git I made a new version which I called interp_2.py, and then, for basically no good reason, I kept that name for the file. If I go back to this at all, I suspect that I will change that to just “interp.py” or maybe “main.py” or something. idk.)

Merry Christmas!

I am aware that this will probably not get answered but for what its worth: Is it possible to access the 'variables' generated within the ~ATH code externally? I.e. if I import an alive object would it be possible to use the python code to test if that object is alive or not (and potentially change that)? I have taken a look at the code but am unsure if it is possible or even coded in that manner. Any response is appreciated but I will not mind and understand if this goes unanswered.

Hey,Assuming I understand what you mean by your question:Yes it would be possible to do that with not too much of a change to the code, but no the code wasn’t designed specifically to facilitate that.The way the code is written, the python function “evalScript” takes two arguments, the first of which is the text of the drocta ~ATH code to run, and the second is a drocta ~ATH object to give as input to the script.In this function, there is a python variable called ATHVars which stores a dictionary of variable names as the keys, and the values being the ~ATH object that is currently pointed to by the variable. If you want to have python do something with a ~ATH object that a particular ~ATH variable points to, you could use this dictionary in order to get that object.At the end of the “evalScript” function, it returns the ~ATH object stored in the return_obj variable. This can be set by sayinganyothervariable.DIE(theObjectYouWantToReturn);So, one way that might work to do what you are wanting to do, is in the ~ATH script you want to run, you would first take all the objects you want to check if they are alive at the end of the script, use BIFURCATE or SPLIT .... ah phooey I never actually put split in this version I guess? ok repeated use of BIFURCATE it is then I guess.Anyway, you would use BIFURCATE to get an object which is the combination of all the objects you are interested in, in whatever way you put them together, and then you make it so that that object is the one you return at the end.If you have one of the ~ATH objects in python, the way to check if it is alive or not is to check the theobjectinquestion.living attribute (see bif.py for this part if you want).

You said “if I import an alive object“, which I’m not sure if might suggest that I haven’t explained how the “import” statement works in this clearly enough.

“import” is a bit of a misnomer here. For the most part, “import” is more of a way to declare new objects, not to import existing objects from a libraryIf I set aside a bunch of time to work on this more I would maybe add support for them actually being libraries?---Oh! If you want the python code to inspect (and possibly change) whether the object that a variable currently points to is alive or not while in the middle of the ~ATH script , a good way to do that would probably be to modify the part which it handles calling functions, and make it support calling functions which are written in python and included in a dictionary under some name, similar to how it uses the funCodes dictionary.

However, that might be kind of tricky to do if you uh, weren’t the one to write the code, because the code I wrote is rather messy? I started cleaning it up at one point by starting to write a parser instead of using the terrible regex that it currently uses, but I never finished writing the parser and integrating it into the interpreter. Bler...

I would like to do that at some point. Hmm...

Maybe I should schedule some time to do that? I have had more experience writing parsers and interpreters since then, so it shouldn’t be /that/ hard for me to clean some of this stuff up and add support for functions written in python.

I probably shouldn’t try working on that like, right now, because I have schoolwork I should be getting to, but, hm.

Hey, if you can, could you send me another ask in a few days to remind me to maybe schedule a day on which to write some stuff for this?

Anyway, thanks for asking. I’m happy to answer questions about this.

So, I just found this and have no clue what's going on. Could you maybe make, like, a simple guide to programming ~ATH? I understand how your python works, but not how to program ~ATH.

Hi!That is sort of what this blog was meant to be.I was trying to explain how to write programs in it, starting with “how do I represent numbers in it?” but then I started prioritizing other projects.I do want to get back to this one though.Perhaps I can give a brief summary in this ask response, and you can tell me what parts you would like clarification on? I will attempt that. I would appreciate it if you tell me what parts of this explanation you are unclear on, or say more about what you don’t understand about how to use drocta ~ATH.

(drocta ~ATH, as a reminder, is my interpretation of how ~ATH could work, which attempts to stay as true to the comic as it can, while still being turing complete, and also possible to implement in reality)In drocta ~ATH there are things called objects. Every object (except for possibly one depending on the specific version of the interpreter, but that isn’t an important detail.) is initially alive. Once an object dies, it cannot be made alive again.Every object has a left half, and a right half, which are both objects. Just because an object is dead does not mean that its left or right halves are dead. Similarly, just because both an object’s left and right halves are dead does not mean that the object is dead.

Also, for any two objects (possibly the same object), there is an object such that the left half of it is the first object, and the right half of it is the second object.

(skippable sidenote : Yes, this would mean that there are infinitely many objects, but they are only /really/ created by the interpreter when they become relevant, so really there are only ever finitely many that the computer is keeping track of)

A variable, in drocta ~ATH, refers to an object. However, it often does not always refer to the same object at different points during the program.

For example, suppose you want some variable to refer to a number which changes during the program. The way that the number which the variable refers to changes is by changing what object the variable refers to.

There are two ways to change what object a variable refers to.

1:Suppose you have three variables names VAR1, VAR2, VAR3.BIFURCATE VAR1[VAR2,VAR3];will take the left half of the object that VAR1 points to, and make VAR2 point to it, instead of whatever it was pointing to before, if anything, and it takes the right half, and makes VAR3 point to it instead of whatever it was pointing to before, if anything.

2:Again, with three variables VAR1, VAR2, VAR3:BIFURCATE [VAR1,VAR2]VAR3;will take the object pointed to by VAR1, and the object pointed to by VAR2, and finds the object such that the left half is the first one, and the right half is the second one, and makes VAR3 point to this object.

Also, when you initially declare an variable it makes a new object for it.

Now, in order to make an object dead, you take a variable (named, say, examplevariable) which currently points to it, and put examplevariable.DIE();and then the object will be dead. Note that this does not make examplevariable point to a different object, which is the same as the one it pointed to before except for being dead. This actually changes the object.In fact, this is the only operation that actually changes an object.

loops:How do you do control flow with this?Well, you use ~ATH loops.

A ~ATH loop looks like this:

~ATH(SOMEVARIABLENAME){//SOME CODE GOES HERE}

What this will do, is it will check if the object currently pointed to by SOMEVARIABLENAME is dead, and if it is not, it runs the code which is {between the curly brackets}. Then, it checks again if the object currently pointed to by SOMEVARIABLENAME is dead, and if not, runs the code inside again. This keeps on repeating until a time that it checks if SOMEVARIABLENAME currently points to an object which is dead, and it is, at which point the program keeps running after the curly brackets.

Note that which object the variable name points to may be changed by the code inside the curly brackets, and probably will be. Changing which object the variable is pointing to is the main way to make the loop exit.

speaking of, let’s get to numbers:

drocta ~ATH doesn’t have numbers as a built in thing. You have to make up your own numbers. But there is a sort of standard way to do so. Where by “standard” I mean, “it is the way that makes the most sense / is the most obvious, and is the way I usually do it”

if some object is the positive integer n, then an object x which has n as the right half, and some object which is alive as the left half, then that object x is n+1 .1 is an object where the left half is a dead object, and the right half is anything.

The reason for this is because this way you can make loops which do things n times, for n>0.

say the object representing n is pointed to by VAR1 , and VAR2 doesn’t point to anything you care about, but it does point to something which is alive, and VAR3 points to an object which represents 1, but you aren’t using it for anything else. You can make a loop like this:

~ATH(VAR2){BIFURCATE VAR1[VAR2,VAR1]; //decrease VAR1 by 1BIFURCATE [VAR2,VAR3]VAR3; /* increase VAR3 by 1, except if this is the last time through the loop, in which case this makes a small error, but one which will be fixed later *///put the stuff you want in the loop here.//Don’t do things to VAR1, VAR2, or VAR3 that you don’t undo though. 

}BIFURCATE VAR3[JUNK,VAR3]; //removes the extra thing that was added to VAR3.

The result of this is that it will do the code you put in the middle n times, and that VAR3 will still store the number n afterwards.

Following processes like these, it is possible to do basically anything you could with a “counter machine / minsky machine” .

Fortunately, there are also things which make things a bit more convenient than using a minsky machine.

In much the same way that you can create numbers, you can also make lists.Just put the successive entries in the list as left halfs of objects, and have the right halves be the list as made so far. (so, basically, the left half is the first element, and the right half is the rest).A caveat here is to make sure that the left half is never a dead object, because that can make it so that the end of the list is detected pre-maturely. However, you might at some point (if you write a lot of drocta ~ATH, which, I am not certain why you would, haha) find that useful to cut the remaining part of a list off.

Of course, when I say to put something as the left half or right half of an object, feel free to switch that in each case. It doesn’t matter as long as you are consistent.

oh, I left out the parts about how to do input and output .

there are some example files on the github for you to check out which have that?

Please let me know if you have any further questions. I’m not sure which parts of this need clarification, so if part of it is unclear, you would be doing me and any other readers of my blog a favor by asking me to clarify them, so please do not hesitate to ask me to clarify any specific part, or to ask me any other question about ~ATH.

Thank you for your interest,

~drocta / ~hE 

How exactly would one go about downloading and running your ~ATH interpretation? Where can we download it and what is needed to run it?

“Hi! My interpreter is on my github account [here], along with a number of example files.

To run it, you need to have python 2.7 installed. (Other versions of python 2 may also work. I don’t think it quite works in python 3, but running it through a python 2 to python3 converter should probably give you a working python 3 version)

You can get python 2 at https://www.python.org/downloads/ .

The current version of python 2 is 2.7.13 . Currently that python download page has a link directly to the download on it. (If anyone is reading this post much later than January 1 2016 and the page has changed in the meantime, feel free to send me an ask asking where the current download link for python 2 is).

Once you have python 2 installed, download the interpreter from my github, https://github.com/drocta/TILDE-ATH . There should be a green button labeled “Clone or download”. If you click this, one of the options it will give will be “download ZIP” . Choose this option to download a .zip file of all the files for drocta ~ATH.

Unzip these files into a folder somewhere. Put the .~ATH files that you want to run in the same folder. Use python2 to run the python file interp_2.py . The program will then expect you to type in the filename of the .~ATH file you want to run and then press enter once. It will then load and run the ~ATH program. When it has finished running the program, it will say "press enter to close" . (this is so you can see the output of your ~ATH program before it closes, in case you run it in certain ways.). When you press enter, the python program will finish.

More details on how to run interp_2.py, in case you don’t know how to:(I am assuming you are on windows. if this is not the case, please send me another ask. It should work fine on other OSs, but these instructions for how to run interp_2.py with python might be slightly different)once python 2 is installed, if you open the command line, navigate to the folder with interp_2.py, and type “python interp_2.py” (without spaces), it should run it. Alternatively you can double click on the interp_2.py, it will probably work.One potential problem you might have is if you have python3 installed as well as python2. In this case you have to make sure you run it with the right version of python. If you are using the command line,“C:\Python27\python.exe interp_2.py” instead of “python interp_2.py” should probably work.

If any of this is unclear or you want any more help with this, please do not hesitate to send another ask.

I’m very pleased that this is still interesting for people, and am happy to help!

This blog still exists

Hi, I haven’t posted much here in quite some time.

So, is this blog abandoned? I wouldn’t say so. I intend to post more ~ATH content here at some point. I have other projects and obligations, which is why I’ve been not doing as much with it recently (”recently”: understatement of the year), but if anyone has any questions about drocta ~ATH, or would like to request that I do something in particular with it, I think I’ll probably respond within a reasonable amount of time.

Right now though I thought I would link to two blogs that I think you are likely to appreciate if you like this blog.

The first is @sbahjsic http://sbahjsic.tumblr.com/ which is for a programming language and assorted connected software meant to be, well, sbahjsic . like sweet bro and h---- jeff. (Warning though, that blog has some javascript alerts when you view it. Also it has moving parts which might be bad if you get nauseous easily or something? idk.) The blog theme there is a work of art to behold. This is likely to appeal because it is also a homestuck related programming language, and also it is great.

The second is @tilde-he which is where I post most of my non ~ATH related tumblr posts. This is somewhat likely to maybe appeal because it is by the same person as this blog (me).

Again, if you have any questions or comments about my version of ~ATH, or, really, any version that you can point out, feel free to send them, and I’ll try to respond within a reasonable amount of time.

Alright, cheers

Do you know of any ~ATH implementations or dialects besides yours and mine?

Actually, yes kinda. Sorta anyway. There is a compiler of sorts that is intended to be ~ATH based, though I don't think it matched canon all that well.

It did have one feature which I found interesting though. It had a command which would create a variable thing which was truthy iff there was a process currently running with a given name, so you could have in a ~ATH loop something that loops until another program is closed. It was a pretty cool feature, but the syntax for it was odd. The author misinterpreted the panel where Sollux deletes the different virus folders he had, so the command was called rm -rf or something like that.

It also had a command to run an executable (by file name) iirc.(which allowed for easy implementation of the robin hood and friar tuck programs)

It also was an editor of sorts, but it had a small window that I don't think was resizeable. It worked (iirc) by doing some string replacement to turn the program into a c(++?) program, which it then compiled.

I'll try to find it  so I can link it. I don't think it represents ~ATH all that accurately, but the using another program as one of the objects seemed like a neat and probably accurate feature (given the mobius double reacharound)

tl;dr yes

re: "computationalalchemist answered: You could use Prolog-style lists for split."

"computationalalchemist answered: You could use Prolog-style lists for split."

I'm not totally sure what you mean, but my best guess as to what you meant is probably pretty similar to how I making it.

I implemented it and I think it works, I need to double check though.

With what I have now when I use 

split [THIS,THIS,THIS,THIS,THIS,THIS,NULL]COUNTER; ~ATH(COUNTER){ print "bananas"; BIFURCATE COUNTER[JUNK,COUNTER]; }EXECUTE(print "ok";); print "whee!";

it yields 

bananas bananas bananas bananas bananas bananas ok whee!

Which seems to make sense to me, and also, fits with how lisp lists work, and apparently also prolog lists.

also where it says split it will also accept bifurcate. they are actually treated as the same command.

import statements aren't fully implemented yet though.

I think I will put this version on github pretty soon.

Thank you for the advice.

Hello again all!

So recently I started kind of working on this again for a bit. I have fixed some bugs with the parser that I haven't pushed yet. I am also writing an improved interpreter that will use the parser instead of the hacky thing that just goes through strings.

However, for the time being, even after I release this version, I would recommend maybe using the older version for a while if anyone is using it, because this version is probably even more buggy.

However, you know how a few posts ago (but more than a year ago (wow) ) I posted that post where I said that I didn't think bifurcate can be used to split values into more than 2 values?

Well I still kind of think that, but on the map page for homestuck on act 6, it says split Act_6[Act_1,Act_2,Act_3,<etc>];

So this is something I intend to implement, and something I am implementing.

And like I said before I would like it to be done with repeated bifurcation, as a sort of syntactic sugar.

And I am thinking I want it to be like

[a,b,c] means the same thing as [a,[b,c]]

so split Z[A,B,C];

would be the same as

BIFURCATE Z[A,BCTEMP]; BIFURCATE BCTEMP[B,C];

and that split [A,B,C]Z;

would be the same as

BIFURCATE [B,C]BCTEMP; BIFURCATE [A,BCTEMP]Z;

But the way the splits would be done could also be backwards

so [a,b,c] could be the same as [[a,b],c]

I'm pretty sure I prefer the first way, but the second way is actually easier to implement.

or at least cleaner looking to implement.

Why doesn't my code look clean ever?

Anyway, my reason for this post is this:

Does anyone have any opinions about how split is implemented?

Learn ~ATH turned 1 today!

yaaaay!

So I think that my explanations of things hasn't been very clear so far, and while I can't promise that they will improve, I do intend to teach programming in person at my school, which might help me to know how to make this tutorial better. Maybe, maybe not. 

May things go well!

I made a parser

I made a parser for ~ATH in addition to the interpreter. I might make the interpreter use the parser at some point in the future, or I might not. If I made the interpreter use the parser, the code for the interpreter would probably be a little cleaner, and possibly a little faster.

The parser is available from my github.

To use it, call tokenize on the text, and then read_all_from on the result of tokenize.

The output will be a list of lists

https://github.com/drocta/TILDE-ATH-Parser

(haven't updated lately because of other unrelated projects, and also other reasons that aren't necessary to describe)

User defined functions can be used now! Also PRINT2 added!

PRINT2 prints a string object as a string. If you give it something that is not a string object it will probably crash, or output the empty string.

Now, to import user defined functions use 

importf filename as FUNCTIONNAME;

Why didn't I put this up earlier?

because I have other projects and because sometimes I am busy/lazy.

OK!

So to make a function to import, you pretty much make a ~ATH file like normal, except the object passed into the function is put into the variable ARGS, and when you want to pass the output object of the function out, you have it as an argument to the DIE method.

It can either be when saying THIS.DIE(RETURNOBJ); or ANYOTHERVARIABLE.DIE(RETURNOBJ);

The object your killing doesn't have to be the one tied to the life of the function or anything.

Oh I should clarify, the THIS variable/object will refer to the current function, not the file that called it.

It CAN be returned, and will be dead when you exit the function.

PROGRESS!

FUNCTIONS WORK.

LESS SPAGHETTI CODE.

although this starts to make me wonder if maybe this strays too far from what ~ATH is like in comic, 

but w/e.

WOAAAAHHHH I posted! (significant progress on functions)

Hey, I haven't posted in a while because I have been doing other stuff. Meanwhile some people followed me. Thank you.

OK, so news: I got calling functions working. it works and stuff.

huh, apparently tumblr changed the interface since I last posted? I think I preferred the previous version? w/e.

But what I haven't added yet is the syntax to define and create a new function. Right now I just have some functions hard-coded in as elements of a dictionary. If you want to try it out just modify the funCodes dictionary. (yes, I am terrible at naming variables.)

Yeah so, I an not totally sure what I am going to have for the syntax for defining a function, but the syntax for calling a function is

FUNCTION_NAME [IN1,IN2]OUT;

(which takes the object consisting of IN1 and IN2 and puts it through the function, where it would be stored as the variable ARGS, and when it finishes the last thing .DIE() was called with is what gets put into OUT)

and then theres

FUNCTION_NAME IN[OUT1,OUT2];

which kinda does the opposite.

takes in IN, and splits the out into OUT1 and OUT2

(this version (the FUNCTION IN[OUT,OUT]; one, as opposed to the FUNCTION[IN,IN]OUT; one) isn't actually implemented yet, but mostly I will just have to copy paste it from the other one and change a few numbers, but I have to homework now so I'll do that later.)

to clarify, the same functions can be used either way. You can say LIME [LIME,LIME]LIME; or you can say LIME LIME[LIME,LIME]; and they would both call the function LIME, but they would do slightly different things.

hooray for stuff.

anyway I am going to go uh, push that new version.

How should the syntax for defining a function be? Should it just be each file can be imported as a function?

Heyho, I now red alot of your sources and i started to understand your interpretation of ~ATH. You do alot of things with the bifurcate command.. I actually thought that bifrucate JUST splits the programm in different colors like here : "bifurcate THIS[THIS(red), THIS(blue)]; " I think that you can actually split your script into N colors while N > 0. like this: bifrucate THIS[THIS(COLOR(0),THIS(COLOR(1),THIS(COLOR(2),THIS(COLOR(3),THIS(COLOR(4),THIS(COLOR(5),THIS(COLOR(6)] and so on.

Yes. I do use BIFURCATE often.

Personally, I doubt that one could say

BIFURCATE A[D,B,C]; (for some names and colors for a b c and d),

because of the "Bi" part of the word "bifurcate", meaning two. (or in some cases, "both")

Further, I would defend my use of it to BIFURCATE things other than  THIS with http://mspaintadventures.com/?viewmap=6 which, for the start of act 5, says

BIFURCATE ACT_5[red(ACT_1), blue(ACT_2)];

which seems to indicate that things other than THIS can be BIFURCATED.

To split something into more than 2 parts, I would just bifurcate it multiple times. *

I don't know what the etiquette is for whether I should click publish or answer privately, so I am going to pick one and hope for the best.

I've realized that my tutorials haven't been tutorial-y enough

I've realized that recently, my tutorial posts have been too much code and not enough explanation. That was a mistake on my part, so I am going to go back now and give better explanations.

Also, I have started to make a table of contents page.

I figured that if someone wanted to read the tutorial after a significant part of it were finished, that they might have trouble, because it would kind of be in reverse order.

So TABLE OF CONTENTS AHOY!

Yeah.

So uh, any suggested changes to the format of the TOC page?

Why cant I mark this as a post that can be answered? I can let people photo reply, but once it goes in drafts I can't let people answer this question? Or is it too long?

What is with this interface?

ok, made some small commits...

(no features added, but cleaned up some code and added example programs)

yup.

it has the basis for how I am going to make functions if I make them, and cleaned up the code for BIFURCATEion, and removed some lines that were commented out.

if you want the new version it is on the github.

no real difference when it runs though.

(if something you wrote doesn't work with the new version, try using BIFFURCATE instead of BIFURCATE to use the old code. You probably won't need to, though. It works fine for me. and you probably haven't written anything in it anyway, because you kind of have to uh, want to, I guess)

planned features and feedback.

I am planning two features to add.

one us user defined functions.

the second is, uh, it would let you make an object that would have itself as one of its components or one of the component of one of its components etc.?

the third one I am not sure if I think it is dumb yet, but I was thinking maybe functions being objects that you can bifurcate together to make functions.

which would allow for macros kind of?

which of these three features are good ideas, (as in, for each, it is a good idea)?

Is drocta ~ATH case- and whitespace-sensitive? For instance, would "BIFURCATE 2NULL[JUNK,BLAH];" do the same thing as "bifurcate 2NULL [JUNK, BLAH];"? Also, is there a difference between calling .DIE() on an object and setting it to NULL? Your tutorials seem to be written as if there were a difference. And finally, I'm still unsure about what "BIFURCATE [CMP0,ZEROCHAR]D;" and "D.DIE();" are supposed to do in regards to interpreting the user-inputted character.

drocta ~ATH is case sensitive in most cases, and white space sensitive in some cases. line breaks/new lines are not neccessary for example.

if I said "bifurcate 2NUL[JUNK,BLAH]; that would by a typo on my part. It should be BIFURCATE.

if people want I could make it not case sensitive, but currently it is.

there is a VERY IMPORTANT (if subtle) difference between setting a variable to null and calling .DIE on an object.

in drocta ~ATH, there are variables and objects. Every variable "points to" or "references" an object. The object that a variable points to does not necessarily stay the same. if you have some variable "C", and then you say BIFURCATE SOMETHING[C,JUNK];

instead of pointing to what it was pointing to before, it points to the left half of whatever SOMETHING is pointing to.

This doesn't make the object no longer exist however. It might be that no variables point to it anymore, but it still is stored in memory.

More than one variable can point to a given object.

If variable A and B both initially point to the same object, and then you change A so that it points to a different object, B will still point to the object that they were pointing to at first.

so if A and B both point to some object (which is initially alive), and then A is made to point to the object initially pointed to by NULL (which is initially dead), then A will point to an object that is dead, but B will still point to an object that is alive.

In contrast, if D and F are pointing to the same object, which is initially alive, and one says "D.DIE();", the object that D points to will die (become dead). D and F still point to the same object, but this object is now dead. So both D and F point to a dead object.

about the user input part:

BIFURCATE [CMP0,ZEROCHAR]D;D.DIE();

determines some object, temporarily pointed to by D, which has the object pointed to by CMP0 as its left half, and the object pointed to by ZEROCHAR as its right half. It then kills this object.

the purpose of this, is so that if one has some character object (from the input statement), and wants to know if it is '0', then one can determine the object that has the object pointed to by CMP0 as the left half, and the object that you want to test as the right half. If the object you are testing IS '0', then the object that you get should be the same one that you killed, so it should be dead. If it is not '0' but rather, say, 'z' or just some object that doesn't have a corresponding character, it will result in some other object, which has not been killed, so it is still alive.

I hope I cleared up some of your questions.

I am so bad at updating. (and a side note)

I am still intending to update this.

but I am not good at time management.

I have like 2 hours of free time after school, (because of certain inefficiencies on my part) so that's my stupid excuse.

I am working on writing some responses to some requests for clarification, and then I will do the second part of the converter TO binary.

the print command can have the end of a loop in.

The contents of the print command can be executed.

so if you say:

import blah A; import bleh B; ~ATH(A){ ~ATH(B){ print heh } ~ATH(NULL){ print giant frogs alert; B.DIE(); } }  

it should print

"heh } ~ATH(NULL){ print giant frogs alert giant frogs alert"

this of course, is not particularly useful as far as I can tell, except possibly for quines, and possibly obfuscation. but really, is it possibly to write anything in ~ATH that isn't obfuscated?

speaking of not obfuscated, I have started working on adding a feature for user defined functions. I have it pretty much worked out how it will work, but I am not sure how I want to make the user DEFINE the functions. so I haven't been doing NOTHING with regards to this.

I couldn't help but notice that out of some of the best things you could do, no link to the download in the sidebar? You may want to do that...

uh, yes. that would be good to do.

I put a link in the about section, but I don't actually know how to put links in the sidebar outside of that.

do you think you could explain that for me?(I am not particularly experienced with tumblr)

EDIT:Nevermind, my friend from school told me where the feature is.

unary to binary (back again, an objects journey) (part 1)

ok, so last time I didn't actually get to converting from unary to binary again.

So I guess I will do that here. (HAHA I JUST GOT IT TO DIVIDE WITH REMAINDER. APPLYING THAT TO THE CONVERSION IN PART 2)

so to do this we have to find the largest power of two not greater than the number,  then the largest power of two not greater then what is remaining of the number, and repeat until we reach zero.

OR we can

find the largest power of two not greater than the number, then for each power of two less than the number, if it is not greater than it, use a 1 and subtract it from the remaining number.

and then for both of these, of course, reverse the result at the end so it is in the right order. 

I think so far the second one of these sounds better.

but come to think of it, repeated integer division by two might work well.

that is, instead of repeated doubling, and then checking which one is larger, it might be faster to do repeated halving. (with a remained of either zero or one)

this could be then used to make a integer base 2 logarithm, with a remainder thing.

and instead of checking each power of two less than it, we could just find the integer base 2 log, and the base 2 log of the "remainder" and the base 2 log of THAT remainder and so on.

that seems like its the best way to me so far, but how do we take the integer logarithm AND get the log remainder thing?

getting the logarithm is fairly simple, just keep dividing by the number until you reach 1.

but how do you get the remainder part? and also how do you do the integer division in the first place with these number like things that we have created?

well lets answer the first of those questions first.

It seems like the remainder of the logarithm is probably related to the remainders of the divisions that make it up.

so lets look at taking the integer base 2 logarithm of 9:

9 4 (rem 1) 2 1

that took 3 halvings, and there was one remainder of one.

what if we try on 10 or something though?

10 5 2 (rem 1) 1

that also took 3 steps and one remainder, but the remainder was on a different step.

now lets try 11

11

5 (rem 1) 2 (rem 1) 1 (rem 0)

now wait, theres a pattern here, which might allow for converting it even faster.

the remainders of the divisions are the remainders of the logs expressed in binary!

we COULD turn them back into unary, so we could take the log of it again,

but what we are doing it converting it into binary anyway! (so that would be a silly step)

so if we look at what we were doing with the repeated division again, but looking at the numbers in binary, it will be pretty evident how to convert it in a better way.:

lets try 9 again (which is 1001)

1001

100 (rem 1) 10 (rem 0) 1 (rem 0) 0 (rem 1)

whats that? the remainders are the number we want in binary?

and now that I think of that it was kind of obvious?

yes. I for some reason did not think of that earlier.

so yeah, thats what we will do, we will repeatedly integer divide the number by 2 until we reach zero, and the remainders will be the number in binary.

but wait, we haven't even written out how to divide the number by two in the first place!

well turns out its not actually that hard to do.

in a loop (that keeps looping provided the number is not zero) subtract one, and if its still not zero, subtract one again. if it is zero after the first subtracting, the remainder of that division is 1. (only the last loop will cause the remainder to be 1) count the number of times where 2 was subtracted. 

so like for 5 that would be

5 3 1 1 2 0 2 (remainder 1)

so that gives the correct answer (2 with remainder zero)

ok, now to implement this integer division by 2 in drocta ~ATH (wow! already? that was fast! /sarcasm)

//given that NUM is the variable that has the name we are halving BIFURCATE [NUM,NUM]2NUM; BIFURCATE 2NUM[NUMCPY,JUNK]; BIFURCATE [BLAH,BLAH]2BLAH; BIFURCATE 2NULL[SUBCOUNT,REMAINDER]; ~ATH(NUMCPY){ BIFURCATE 2BLAH[UNEVEN,JUNK]; BIFURCATE NUMCPY[JUNK,NUMCPY]; BIFURCATE [NUMCPY,NUMCPY]2NUMCPY; BIFURCATE 2NUMCPY[NUMCPYCPY,JUNK]; ~ATH(NUMCPYCPY){ BIFURCATE [BLAH,SUBCOUNT]SUBCOUNT; BIFURCATE NUMCPY[JUNK,NUMCPY]; BIFURCATE 2NULL[UNEVEN,NUMCPYCPY]; } ~ATH(UNEVEN){ BIFURCATE [BLAH,REMAINDER]REMAINDER; BIFURCATE 2NULL[UNEVEN,JUNK]; } } BIFURCATE [NUMCPY,NUMCPY]2NUMCPY; BIFURCATE 2NUMCPY[NUMDIV2,JUNK]; 

ok, that should divide the number by 2, put the result in NUMDIV2, and put the remainder in REMAINDER.

this takes linear time based on the size of the unary number. (provided I didn't make a mistake)

so now it is time to make sure it works, hold on a second while I check it. (I mean, im not going to post this until after I check it, so it doesn't really make sense to tell you to wait, because you just keep reading, but as I am writing this, I am about to test it.)

ok, I tested it. and it didn't seem to work, but then I realized that I made a mistake in making the test. (I checked the wrong variable)

but yeah, turns out that works...

ok, so now we need to repeatedly divide the number by two to get the remainders.

and we need to store these remainders in a list or something.

reading binary numbers from the user, continued.

when we left off, we had code to interpret one binary number from user input, and output it as a unary number. In this post we will add the second user input, and maybe make a thing that converts from unary to binary, and then outputs it.

The code for that was the following:

import blah BLAH; print please enter whatever character you will be using for binary zero.; INPUT ZEROCHAR; BIFURCATE ZEROCHAR[ZEROCHAR,JUNK]; import chrcmp CMP0; BIFURCATE [CMP0,ZEROCHAR]D; D.DIE(); print please enter whatever character you will be using for binary one.; INPUT ONECHAR; BIFURCATE ONECHAR[ONECHAR,JUNK]; import chrcmp CMP1; BIFURCATE [CMP1,ONECHAR]D; D.DIE(); BIFURCATE [NULL,NULL]2NULL; BIFURCATE 2NULL[OUTNUM,JUNK]; print please input the binary number you want.(it will be converted to unary); INPUT BINNUM; ~ATH(BINNUM){ BIFURCATE [OUTNUM,OUTNUM]G; BIFURCATE G[NCOPY,OUTNUM]; ~ATH(NCOPY){ BIFURCATE NCOPY[JUNK,NCOPY]; BIFURCATE [BLAH,OUTNUM]OUTNUM; }  BIFURCATE BINNUM[CHAR,BINNUM]; BIFURCATE [CMP0,CHAR]NEQ0; ~ATH(NEQ0){ BIFURCATE [BLAH,OUTNUM]OUTNUM; BIFURCATE 2NULL[NEQ0,JUNK]; } } print ok, going to print it out in unary, with each digit on one line. If the number you entered was large you might want to close the program instead of hitting enter.; INPUT JUNK; BIFURCATE [OUTNUM,OUTNUM]GOUTNUM; BIFURCATE GOUTNUM[OUTNUMCOPY,JUNK]; ~ATH(OUTNUMCOPY){ BIFURCATE OUTNUMCOPY[JUNK,OUTNUMCOPY]; print 1; }

ok, so what do we need to do after that?

Well we need to make it get two numbers, right?

Yes. Yes we do.

But getting one number was kind of long, wasn't it.

Luckily we don't have to have the entire thing there twice, much of it we can jusst have it in there once.

we COULD define a function, but I haven't added that to the interpreter yet, so yeah...

so a significant portion of that was initialization stuff that doesn't need to be duplicated. the first 14 lines in fact!

so pretty much we just duplicate everything but the first 14 lines.

gee, now I sound lazy for not writing this part earlier.

anyway, here goes:

import blah BLAH;

print please enter whatever character you will be using for binary zero.;

INPUT ZEROCHAR;

BIFURCATE ZEROCHAR[ZEROCHAR,JUNK];

import chrcmp CMP0;

BIFURCATE [CMP0,ZEROCHAR]D;

D.DIE();

print please enter whatever character you will be using for binary one.;

INPUT ONECHAR;

BIFURCATE ONECHAR[ONECHAR,JUNK];

import chrcmp CMP1;

BIFURCATE [CMP1,ONECHAR]D;

D.DIE();

BIFURCATE [NULL,NULL]2NULL;

BIFURCATE 2NULL[OUTNUM,JUNK];

print please input the first binary number you want.(it will be converted to unary);

INPUT BINNUM;

~ATH(BINNUM){

BIFURCATE [OUTNUM,OUTNUM]G;

BIFURCATE G[NCOPY,OUTNUM];

~ATH(NCOPY){

BIFURCATE NCOPY[JUNK,NCOPY];

BIFURCATE [BLAH,OUTNUM]OUTNUM;

} 

BIFURCATE BINNUM[CHAR,BINNUM];

BIFURCATE [CMP0,CHAR]NEQ0;

~ATH(NEQ0){

BIFURCATE [BLAH,OUTNUM]OUTNUM;

BIFURCATE 2NULL[NEQ0,JUNK];

}

}

BIFURCATE [BLAH,OUTNUM]UINNUM1;

BIFURCATE UINNUM1[JUNK,UINNUM1];

BIFURCATE 2NULL[OUTNUM,JUNK];

print input the second binary number:;

INPUT BINNUM;

~ATH(BINNUM){

BIFURCATE [OUTNUM,OUTNUM]G;

BIFURCATE G[NCOPY,OUTNUM];

~ATH(NCOPY){

BIFURCATE NCOPY[JUNK,NCOPY];

BIFURCATE [BLAH,OUTNUM]OUTNUM;

} 

BIFURCATE BINNUM[CHAR,BINNUM];

BIFURCATE [CMP0,CHAR]NEQ0;

~ATH(NEQ0){

BIFURCATE [BLAH,OUTNUM]OUTNUM;

BIFURCATE 2NULL[NEQ0,JUNK];

}

}

BIFURCATE [BLAH,OUTNUM]UINNUM2;

BIFURCATE UINNUM2[JUNK,UINNUM2];

BIFURCATE [UINNUM1,UINNUM1]CUINNUM1;

BIFURCATE CUINNUM1[SUM,JUNK];//haha, some junk

BIFURCATE [UINNUM2,UINNUM2]CUINNUM2;

BIFURCATE CUINNUM2[UINNUM2CPY,JUNK];

~ATH(UINNUM2CPY){

BIFURCATE UINNUM2CPY[JUNK,UINNUM2CPY];

BIFURCATE [BLAH,SUM]SUM;

}

print ok, going to print the sum out in unary, with each digit on one line. If the numbers you entered were large you might want to close the program instead of hitting enter.;

INPUT JUNK;

BIFURCATE [SUM,SUM]GSUM;

BIFURCATE GSUM[SUMCOPY,JUNK];

~ATH(SUMCOPY){

BIFURCATE SUMCOPY[JUNK,SUMCOPY];

print 1;

}

ok. That worked. I haven't made it convert the output to binary yet. I started this the day of the other post, but there was a bug I didnt get around to fixing in it that I didn't find the fix for until today.

that bug was that in the part where it changes the binary number to a unary number, the first time around, the unary number starts at zero and increases to what it should be...

...but I forgot to include the line to reset it back to zero for the second number.

but in works now.

I might make the part where it converts from unary to binary now instead of later, but I have to do stuff.

Sorry for having such a slow post rate, it is partly because I am busy and partly because I am lazy. mostly the [FORMER,LATTER].

hey, it adds the numbers that were entered in binary...

So a future improvement is to make it so it outputs it in binary as well.

Another possible future post is something that shouldn't work but the interpreter has a certain bug that might be amusing, and will not negatively affect many things.

specifically, if you have a "}" inside of a print statement, and you are jumping to the end of a loop, it will jump to the inside of the print statement, and execute the text as code. This is a bug, not a feature, so you should not rely on it when writing stuff. It might be fun to mess with though.

I might add user defined functions to the interpreter soon...

I don't feel that this post really explained much of anything, but I have to do stuff now, so I am going to post this, and possibly modify it later with clarifications.

Feel free to send me messages asking about how some part works.

How often should I post stuff?

I am still here, and I am wondering what my update schedule for this tutorial should be.

Its been a week or two since I last posted part of the tutorial, so I feel like I probably should have posted during that time, but I haven't.

I will probably post one today.

Do you have any suggestions for what type of update schedule I should keep on this tutorial?

reading the contents of user input, and calculator improvement

This post will cover how to actually determine WHAT the user has typed, instead of just how long it is. It will also include how to interpret what the user enters as a binary number, so that its easier to type.

An Essential part of making it interpret binary numbers is making it double numbers repeatedly.

This actually has a few ways that can be done, so this is one of the first situations where coding style for this problem might differ from person to person. Because of this, I will say more than one way to do it.

The first way to do this it to copy the number twice, and then start from zero and add both of the copies. This is relatively inefficient, and would take

a copy thing, consisting of two bifurcates (which would take a little time)

where the size of the initial number is N, 2N normal bifurcates, 2N reverse bifurcates, and 4N lines relating to the actual loop

assuming each command takes the same amount of time (which is an oversimplification) this would take 9N+C line times. (C is a constant) This might be acceptable, but there is a more efficient and nicer looking way.

The second way is nicer looking, but still not the most effecient. However, when multiplying by a larger number(such as 3, or 4, or even large numbers), this method is part of what would be used.

The second method is essentially copying the number (using a reverse bifurcate and a normal bifurcate), and then adding the number to zero, except instead of each loop increasing the new number by one, it increases it by two. This is shorter, and it looks nicer. It also only takes half as many normal bifurcates. As a result, the number of steps it would take (again assuming each step is the same length) is 8N+C, instead of 9N+C 

this one I will write out, but it is still not the best way:

//N is the number initially BIFURCATE [NULL,NULL]2NULL; BIFURCATE [N,N]G; BIFURCATE G[NCOPY,JUNK]; BIFURCATE 2NULL[RESULT,JUNK]; ~ATH(NCOPY){ BIFURCATE NCOPY[JUNK,NCOPY]; BIFURCATE [BLAH,RESULT]RESULT; BIFURCATE [BLAH,RESULT]RESULT; } 

ok, so yeah. that takes N, and puts twice N into RESULT, but it is still inefficient.

A more efficient version is to copy the initial number, and add the number to itself. This way you only have to do half the number of reverse BIFURCATE statements. This is much more efficient, taking instead the steps:

a copy thing, consisting of two bifurcates (which would take a little time)

where the size of the initial number is N, N normal bifurcates, N reverse bifurcates, and 2N lines relating to the actual loop

This has 7N+C steps, which is a significant improvement. I think it is the fastest way to double a number in drocta ~ATH.

It is as follows (N is the number)

BIFURCATE [N,N]G; BIFURCATE G[NCOPY,RESULT]; ~ATH(NCOPY){ BIFURCATE NCOPY[JUNK,NCOPY]; BIFURCATE [BLAH,RESULT]RESULT; } 

This is shortest and fastest solution I have found. If you find a shorter or faster method, please tell me.

Ok. Now we can double numbers. That is good. That is an important step. But we still haven't gotten user input to be read in any reasonable way.

Hang on, I'm GETTING TO THAT. GEEZ. (I'm kidding, no one has been complaining about my taking so long, other than myself)

Ok, so here goes:

To interpret the binary number input and convert it to a "number", we can follow the following algorithm:

start with zero.(this is before the loop)

If there are any characters left, double the number that is being created.

remove the first character from the remaining characters. If it is "1" or whatever symbol (or alternatively if it is not "0"), add one to the number that is being created. Otherwise, continue onto step 4 without doing anything first.

go back to the start of the loop (step 2)

Ok. thats the algorithm we are going to use. But I STILL haven't explained how to recognize what the next character is. Seriously what is up with that?

What you do is you bifurcate the rest of the input into [the next character,the rest of the input].

Now you have the next character. Then what you do is you reverse bifurcate it with some other object, and then you check whether that object is already dead or not.

But how do you make it so the combination is already dead? How do you get the object for the character before the user has even inputed it?

Answer: You don't. Not in the current version of drocta ~ATH anyway. You will have to tell the user to enter all the characters they will be using ahead of time. Yes this is horrible and stupid. No its not exactly like that in the comic. Its ~ATH what do you expect? :P

that might change in future versions, but I will try to stay backwards compatible with that.

but anyway, back to comparing it:

so you say something along the lines of:

import comparingobject CMP1; othercodehere makeNEQ1besomethingalive BIFURCATE [CMP1,CHAR]EQ1; BIFURCATE [NULL,NULL]2NULL; ~ATH(EQ1){ print yep, they are equal; BIFURCATE 2NULL[EQ1,NEQ1]; } ~ATH(NEQ1){ print nope, they are not equal; BIFURCATE 2NULL[NEQ1,JUNK]; }  

in the othercodehere you get the character a head of time, and say BIFURCATE[CMP1,THECHARTHATMATCHESWITHCMP1]D; D.DIE();

That makes it so that it will go through the one section of code if the character is the right one, but something else if it is something else.

Which is what we want.

So to put it all together, and make the thing that interprets the input as a binary number(hold on tight(ok, what, why did I say that), this will be a long one(why am I talking like this?)):

import blah BLAH; print please enter whatever character you will be using for binary zero.; INPUT ZEROCHAR; BIFURCATE ZEROCHAR[ZEROCHAR,JUNK]; import chrcmp CMP0; BIFURCATE [CMP0,ZEROCHAR]D; D.DIE(); print please enter whatever character you will be using for binary one.; INPUT ONECHAR; BIFURCATE ONECHAR[ONECHAR,JUNK]; import chrcmp CMP1; BIFURCATE [CMP1,ONECHAR]D; D.DIE(); BIFURCATE [NULL,NULL]2NULL; BIFURCATE 2NULL[OUTNUM,JUNK]; print please input the binary number you want.(it will be converted to unary); INPUT BINNUM; ~ATH(BINNUM){ BIFURCATE [OUTNUM,OUTNUM]G; BIFURCATE G[NCOPY,OUTNUM]; ~ATH(NCOPY){ BIFURCATE NCOPY[JUNK,NCOPY]; BIFURCATE [BLAH,OUTNUM]OUTNUM; }  BIFURCATE BINNUM[CHAR,BINNUM]; BIFURCATE [CMP0,CHAR]NEQ0; ~ATH(NEQ0){ BIFURCATE [BLAH,OUTNUM]OUTNUM; BIFURCATE 2NULL[NEQ0,JUNK]; } } print ok, going to print it out in unary, with each digit on one line. If the number you entered was large you might want to close the program instead of hitting enter.; INPUT JUNK; BIFURCATE [OUTNUM,OUTNUM]GOUTNUM; BIFURCATE GOUTNUM[OUTNUMCOPY,JUNK]; ~ATH(OUTNUMCOPY){ BIFURCATE OUTNUMCOPY[JUNK,OUTNUMCOPY]; print 1; } print Am I a terrible person for writing this?; 

Oh gosh. I wish I could indent in tumblr. that is terrible to read. tumblr is a terrible source code editor.

One time someone called me a masochaist for writing this type of stuff.

And then we just have to put that together with the adding thing, and then maybe add a better way of outputting the number. maybe in binary.

HAHAHAHAH

ok, yeah, I'm going to put it together in the next post, not this one, because I have to homework now.(using the noun homework as a verb was intentional)

yeah. putting it together in the next post.

As always, if something was confusing, please ask for clarification.