Questions tagged [code-generation]
For challenges where answers are expected to generate code.
98 questions
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A million and one constants
When code golfing, it can be useful to write numbers succinctly. This challenge involves using a source language to generate code for a target language. For the submission to be valid, it must ...
- 3,071
8
votes
1
answer
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Sequence of programs that prints the next one with length growth being equal to π
Challenge
You must produce an infinite sequence of programs \$P_0, P_1, P_2,\$ … such that each program \$P_n\$, when run, prints the exact source code of \$P_{n+1}\$ and then halts.
Each program \$...
- 69
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votes
12
answers
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Bespoke numbers
Introduction
Bespoke is an esoteric programming language I created in January 2025, where the commands are encoded into the lengths of words in the program. For example, ...
- 1,291
33
votes
26
answers
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Print 4 billion if statements
Recently (okay, December 2023, I'm a little late) there's been a meme going around about a program checking if a 32-bit unsigned integer is even or odd using four billion if statements:
...
- 46.2k
7
votes
3
answers
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Golf an HQ9+ transpiler
There was a prior question about golfing an HQ9+ compiler that translates HQ9+ code into the language it is written in, but that was closed as a duplicate of the interpreter challenge because ...
- 1,252
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votes
17
answers
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Make Code Printing X without X
The challenge is simple: write a program which takes in some non-empty string \$n\$ consisting of only uppercase and lowercase ASCII letters, and outputs the code for a program (in the same language) ...
- 7,465
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votes
31
answers
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Restricted Meta-Cat
Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to write a program in a language of your choice that, when given a string (limited to printable ASCII) as input, outputs a new program in the same ...
- 12.6k
8
votes
3
answers
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Expand Emmet HTML Abbreviations
Emmet is a text-editor and IDE plugin for writing HTML code using much fewer keypresses. You might think of it like a code-golfing HTML preprocessor. Its syntax is based on CSS selectors.
Your ...
- 12.6k
18
votes
24
answers
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Meta-cat program
Write a program or function that takes input and outputs/returns a full program (in the same language) that outputs said input.
Note that the input may contain any printable ASCII character or newline ...
- 2,105
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votes
12
answers
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Increment, decrement, undo, peek
Write a program or function (hereafter "function") that returns or prints the source code of four new functions: Increment, decrement, undo, and peek.
The initial function contains an ...
- 12k
6
votes
1
answer
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views
Convert 256-wrap brainfuck into 257-wrap brainfuck
Usually each cell in brainfuck has 256 states, which is not enough to tell whether input is EOF or a character (usually \xFF but ...
- 32.7k
3
votes
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answers
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Hello Shue! (Robbers)
Cops thread (read first)
Robbers, your task is to find a Shue program p that when given the cops input i, outputs a program <...
- 8,048
4
votes
2
answers
394
views
Hello Shue! (Cops)
Robbers thread
In this cops-and-robbers challenge, your task is to write a program h that outputs "Hello Shue!". Next, you have to choose a string ...
- 8,048
12
votes
8
answers
1k
views
Iterative Quine
Create a program which prints itself, followed by an additional program. This additional program should print the first program, itself, and then a third program. This continues until the nth program, ...
- 2,647
19
votes
2
answers
650
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Counting and so on
Content
You count numbers every day (I think), and most of you know how to count properly, the one next to 1 is 2, and the next ...
- 1,807
15
votes
4
answers
792
views
Could you massage this stack for me?
Forth is one of the few non-esoteric stack-based languages. For this challenge, we will use a small subset of Forth, which simply executes a sequence of words in a linear fashion — without any ...
- 5,753
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votes
2
answers
1k
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Generate the shortest regex to match these but not those [closed]
Challenge
Given two lists of strings where each string is of length 50 and each list is also of length 50 generate the shortest regex you can that fully matches all the strings in the first list and ...
- 1,161
13
votes
9
answers
1k
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Optimize imnotdeadfish
Fluff
After taking a look at deadfish, I decided it sucked, so I came up with a new (and easier) variant of it: imnotdeadfish.
As with its predecessor, there are 4 commands and an accumulator which ...
- 1,739
18
votes
12
answers
3k
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Make a polyglot generator
A polyglot is a program that runs in several languages.
Your challenge is to:
Choose at least two languages (Different versions count as different languages)
Create a program or function that takes ...
- 46.2k
12
votes
4
answers
571
views
Shrinking Triangles
Write an infinite list of triangle codes, defined as code where the i-th line has i bytes for all lines, such that the i-th code generates (i-1)th code and has 1 more line than the (i-1)th code.
The ...
- 32.7k
12
votes
3
answers
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Multiplying Quines
The program should start out with 2 separate files, here named "a" and "b". "a" and "b" should be what I am calling inverse quines: "a", when run, ...
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votes
10
answers
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Help Stack Exchange transpose tables
Stack Exchange doesn't know how to transpose tables. Let's help.
Given a markdown table, transpose it.
Input assumptions:
There will be at least two rows (including header) and two columns
Either all ...
- 31.8k
13
votes
9
answers
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Peel away the layers - Robbers
This is the Robbers thread. For the Cops challenge, see here
As the robbers, your job is to crack the cops' answers. Choose an uncracked, unsafe cop answer and attempt to figure out which languages, ...
- 50.9k
28
votes
14
answers
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Peel away the layers - Cops
In this cops-and-robbers challenge, robbers must crack cop answers by finding out which languages the cops used.
This is the Cops thread. For the Robbers' challenge, see here
Cops, you are to write a ...
- 50.9k
9
votes
6
answers
987
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TTT: Turing Text Tape
Introduction
Ah, INTERCAL...
As much as I'd like encourage everyone to Try it Online, text output is just painful.
According to the docs it uses the "Turing Text Model".
While an... ...
- 1,083
3
votes
0
answers
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Predictor Generator [closed]
Write a program that when given a string \$S\$, it generates a program of the same language as itself.
The generated program, when given a continuous substring of \$S\$, should predict the next ...
user62257
24
votes
19
answers
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99 ways to say "I love you"
Inspired by this blog post.
Write a program that outputs 99 distinct programs (in the same language) that output the string I love you.
How the programs are ...
- 2,175
18
votes
3
answers
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How divisible are you?
You are to create a program which, when given a positive integer \$n\$, outputs a second program. This second program, when run, must take a second positive integer \$x\$ and output one of two ...
- 50.9k
3
votes
9
answers
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Lazy brainfuck programmer [closed]
Background
Joe is working on his new Brainfuck answer on Codegolf. The algorithm he's using to solve the challenge is a bit complicated, so Joe came up with idea of simplifying his Brainfuck notation ...
- 12.8k
39
votes
18
answers
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Generate Brainfuck for the numbers 1–255
Write a program that, for the numbers 1 through 255, prints out BF code that will produce the given number in some byte of the array, plus a newline.
For example, the first four lines of the output ...
- 2,175
7
votes
2
answers
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views
Generate Aheui Number
Make a Number Expression is related : actually, it is also about Aheui. But it just made number expression, but this made real Aheui code.
Aheui is esolang written in only Korean character. Because of ...
- 979
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answers
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Write the longest period iterating quine bounded by 500 bytes
Your job is to create the longest period iterating quine, where the length of each program in the sequence is bounded by 500 bytes.
That is, if you repeat the following steps:
Start with your initial ...
- 7,353
8
votes
1
answer
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views
Generate an expression yielding near-equidistributed result
Create a program (any language) which, given positive integer m, outputs a valid C expression that:
Uses a single variable x ...
- 615
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votes
5
answers
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Compose two Brainfuck programs
Given 2 brainfuck code snippets A and B, output some brainfuck code C which has the same ...
- 32.7k
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votes
32
answers
4k
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Code-generator with unique characters
Challenge
Your task is to write a piece of code that outputs another piece of code. That code must in turn output yet another code until the final code outputs the integer 1. The chain ends the first ...
- 46.8k
28
votes
37
answers
4k
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Produce a m*n table in HTML
Input :
Two decimal integers m and n that respectively give the number of rows and columns of the table.
...
- 399
4
votes
4
answers
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Program Sequence Generator
Your challenge is to implement a cyclic Program Sequence Generator (PSG) in a language of your choice.
Given a language, L, a PSG in L is a program in L that outputs a PSG in L. Some properties of a ...
- 609
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votes
15
answers
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Generate TeX to typeset Sierpinski Triangle Fractal
Challenge
Write code that outputs TeX (LaTeX) math-equation code (given below) that will typeset Sierpinski Triangle Fractal of 5 levels. Shortest code wins.
Details
TeX (and friends like LaTeX, ...
- 1,681
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votes
79
answers
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Script that outputs a script that prints a given input
Write a piece of code that takes a string as input, and outputs a piece of code in the same language that, when run, will output the initial input string.
It must be able to handle any combination of ...
- 417
6
votes
2
answers
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views
Generate all halting Smallfuck programs of length n
Your task is to write a program that, given a number n, returns a list of all valid, halting Smallfuck programs of length n, in any order.
Actually, we're using a variation of Smallfuck called F2, ...
- 15.6k
4
votes
1
answer
391
views
Insert a simulated Ken Thompson virus into a program
A Ken Thompson virus is a virus that infects your compiler and other programs. Since it infects all your tools, you can not detect it without using tools from before the virus was introduced.
Your ...
- 7,353
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votes
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answers
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Generate ;# code
Related to: Make a ;# interpreter
In the above linked challenge the task was to create an interpreter for the esoteric language ;#.
The ...
- 2,034
18
votes
9
answers
726
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Make Wise Numbers
Wise is a simple bitwise language I designed a while back. It is based around Python's bitwise operations. It has several operations most of these are the same or very similar to the equivalent ...
- 103k
26
votes
8
answers
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Convert braces to Right Hand Brace (Sad Brace)
Right hand brace is a style of code bracketing in which curly braces and semicolons are all aligned to a single point on the right side of a a file.
Generally, this is considered bad practice, for ...
- 11.7k
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votes
7
answers
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Kolmogorov Complexity Meta Golfer
Mike Bufardeci (Pyth) - 175 bytes
Leo (Retina) - 175 bytes
devRicher (Lua) - 182 bytes
Peter Taylor (CJam) - Waiting for clarification
Lyth (C++11) - Waiting for clarification
Edit: Several ...
- 3,779
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votes
13
answers
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Output a program that outputs a program ... that outputs PPCG
Challenge:
Write a code that, when executed will output the source code of a second program that can be executed in another language. The second program should output the source code of a third ...
- 46.8k
16
votes
9
answers
909
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Grow Till It's 2017
In this challenge you'll be building a program that grows as it traverses through the ages… Until it's 2017.
Challenge
Whenever this challenge description says “program”, you can ...
- 2,076
15
votes
2
answers
369
views
Solve a Stack State Diagram
A stack state diagram shows how the values on one stack are changed into the other. For example, this is a stack state diagram:
3 0 2 1 0
This means that there ...
- 15.6k
22
votes
14
answers
3k
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Cheating Cyclic Quine
Concept
Write a program that outputs code in its programming language. That code, when executed, must output the original program.
Rules
Since this is a cheating quine, you can read the original ...
- 6,482
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votes
15
answers
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Transpile WordMath
We've all seen those online "maths hax" that look like this:
Think of a number, divide by 2, multiply by 0, add 8.
And, by magic, everyone ends up with the ...
- 14.7k