Just wondering... Several people here have signitures consisting of
compacted POV-Ray code. Has anyone ever actually tried *running* this stuff?
I just did, was utterly unable to follow how the heck it works, but was
highly impressed by the resulting graphics!

Just a thought...
Andrew.

PS. I gotta get me one! :-|

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Andrew Coppin <orp### [at] btinternetcom> wrote:
> Just wondering... Several people here have signitures consisting of
> compacted POV-Ray code. Has anyone ever actually tried *running* this stuff?

  Well, some time ago (a year or something like that?) there was a boom
of making compact pov-signatures.
  I think that the idea started from me using a compact signature written
in C and then making a similar with pov code (or was it someone else who
made it in pov code first? I can't remember).

  At that time it was a common practice for me and a couple of other people
to take the signatures of other people and shorten them even more (without
affecting the resulting image in any way, or at most only slightly
noticeably). Some of the shortenings were really impressive (eg. something
like from 5 lines to 2 lines).
  Usually shortening has the side-effect of making the code even more
obfuscated, so it has two advantages.

-- 
#macro M(A,N,D,L)plane{-z,-9pigment{mandel L*9translate N color_map{[0rgb x]
[1rgb 9]}scale<D,D*3D>*1e3}rotate y*A*8}#end M(-3<1.206434.28623>70,7)M(
-1<.7438.1795>1,20)M(1<.77595.13699>30,20)M(3<.75923.07145>80,99)// - Warp -

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Much enlightened ;-)

Andrew.

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"Andrew Coppin" <orp### [at] btinternetcom> wrote in
news:3d99a877@news.povray.org: 

> Just wondering... Several people here have signitures consisting of
> compacted POV-Ray code. Has anyone ever actually tried *running* this
> stuff?

I did, and actually I collect all these signatures in a file...

> I just did, was utterly unable to follow how the heck it works,
> but was highly impressed by the resulting graphics!

A good exercise is to format nicely these signatures, then to understand how 
they work. Renaming variables may help :-)

> Just a thought...
> Andrew.

I believe the origin of such craziness is from "The International Obfuscated 
C Code Contest" <http://www.ioccc.org/>
Now, most programming languages has some obfuscated code showing :-)
Even Perl, which is quite obfuscated in its natural state ;-)
See also the "Name that programming language" (approximate citation) from 
the Off-Topic newsgroup.

> PS. I gotta get me one! :-|

Me too :-) I just have to start working on it, creating a short scene then 
compressing it.

-- 
--=#=--=#=--=#=--=#=--=#=--=#=--=#=--=#=--=#=--
Philippe Lhoste (Paris -- France)
Professional programmer and amateur artist
http://jove.prohosting.com/~philho/

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> I believe the origin of such craziness is from "The International
Obfuscated
> C Code Contest" <http://www.ioccc.org/>

I think the very *existence* of the IOCCC is a statment about the mentality
of C programmers... (Bloody weirdos!) I keep having these nightmares that
one day I'll wake up and discover I've become a C programmer...

(Of course, programming in Java can hardly be considered sane either! But
it's mainly the class library that's bizzare, not the actuall language...)

> Now, most programming languages has some obfuscated code showing :-)
> Even Perl, which is quite obfuscated in its natural state ;-)

Oooo... Can't stand Perl!

> > PS. I gotta get me one! :-|
>
> Me too :-) I just have to start working on it, creating a short scene then
> compressing it.

Mmm... with my years of experience of fractal geometry and iterated systems,
_surely_ I can come up with something ;-)

Andrew.

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For short code scenes, see:

http://10best.raytrace.com/short/shorttable.html

and

http://10best.raytrace.com/short2/shortvote2.html

-- 
#macro M(A,N,D,L)plane{-z,-9pigment{mandel L*9translate N color_map{[0rgb x]
[1rgb 9]}scale<D,D*3D>*1e3}rotate y*A*8}#end M(-3<1.206434.28623>70,7)M(
-1<.7438.1795>1,20)M(1<.77595.13699>30,20)M(3<.75923.07145>80,99)// - Warp -

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In article <3d99cb49@news.povray.org>,
 "Andrew Coppin" <orp### [at] btinternetcom> wrote:

> I think the very *existence* of the IOCCC is a statment about the mentality
> of C programmers... (Bloody weirdos!) I keep having these nightmares that
> one day I'll wake up and discover I've become a C programmer...

You are aware of the language POV-Ray is written in, aren't you? And 
that probably the only group on this server with a higher concentration 
of coders and patch writers is povray.unofficial.patches? ;-)


> (Of course, programming in Java can hardly be considered sane either! But
> it's mainly the class library that's bizzare, not the actuall language...)

I think C++ is an even better example. There you have an ugly library 
*and* a language that you can do all sorts of bizzare stuff in.
Perl is more obfuscated in normal use, but you can't do as much. Either 
one can be reduced to something that doesn't resemble anything 
human-readable.

-- 
Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>
http://home.earthlink.net/~cjameshuff/
POV-Ray TAG: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg
http://tag.povray.org/

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> You are aware of the language POV-Ray is written in, aren't you? And
> that probably the only group on this server with a higher concentration
> of coders and patch writers is povray.unofficial.patches? ;-)

Er... well...

'Oh dear'... I think I might be in trouble here... [Smiles sweetly and exits
stage left]

> I think C++ is an even better example. There you have an ugly library
> *and* a language that you can do all sorts of bizzare stuff in.
> Perl is more obfuscated in normal use, but you can't do as much. Either
> one can be reduced to something that doesn't resemble anything
> human-readable.

I hate Perl. I can't get it to work at all. It's nasty. I've had more sucess
with C, although it's just too dam hard to read... (I was actually trying to
write an object engine... *you* try manipulating pointers to pointers to
arrays of pointers to functions! Very hard when you don't have any sort of
manual ;-) Not to mention the danger of leaving pointers dangling... I
wouldn't *dare* try it with anything other than Linux 8-D (But then... I've
never heard of a C compiler that works on anything but Linux. I'm sure such
things must _exist_, but I've never come across one...)

Andrew.

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Andrew Coppin wrote:
> Just wondering... Several people here have signitures consisting of
> compacted POV-Ray code. Has anyone ever actually tried *running* this stuff?
> I just did, was utterly unable to follow how the heck it works, but was
> highly impressed by the resulting graphics!
> 

Someone had even made a web page of most of them.  Unfortunately, I've 
been googling for 30 minutes now, and I can't find it... :(

> PS. I gotta get me one! :-|

Everyone does.  Post the results in p.g.  and watch the sparks fly! 
It's quite interesting to find out the tricks other povers will come up 
with to compact your .sig even more!

> 
> 
> 


-- 
/*Francois Labreque*/#local a=x+y;#local b=x+a;#local c=a+b;#macro P(F//
/*    flabreque    */L)polygon{5,F,F+z,L+z,L,F pigment{rgb 9}}#end union
/*        @        */{P(0,a)P(a,b)P(b,c)P(2*a,2*b)P(2*b,b+c)P(b+c,<2,3>)
/*   videotron.ca  */}camera{orthographic location<6,1.25,-6>look_at a }

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Andrew Coppin <orp### [at] btinternetcom> wrote:
> (But then... I've
> never heard of a C compiler that works on anything but Linux.

  You must be joking, right?

-- 
#macro M(A,N,D,L)plane{-z,-9pigment{mandel L*9translate N color_map{[0rgb x]
[1rgb 9]}scale<D,D*3D>*1e3}rotate y*A*8}#end M(-3<1.206434.28623>70,7)M(
-1<.7438.1795>1,20)M(1<.77595.13699>30,20)M(3<.75923.07145>80,99)// - Warp -

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