The alphabet in programming languages

Question

Our task is to, for each letter of the (English) alphabet, write a program that prints the alphabet, in a language whose name starts with that letter.

Input: none

Output:

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

uppercase and trailing newline optional

Rules:

• The scoring metric is the length of the programming language name, plus the length of the code. Hence, C will be assessed a "penalty" of 1, while GolfScript will be assessed a penalty of 10.
• One language/implementation per answer. Multiple answers are encouraged.
• If a programming language name's first letter is not an English letter, it should not be coerced into one. It will be treated as a separate letter (meaning less competition).
• No answer will be accepted until every English letter has a solution.

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Current rankings:

• A​PL: 5
• B​NQ: 10
• C​anvas: 7
• D​OS: 13
• E​SMin: 7
• F​ig: ~4.646
• G​s2: 4
• H​usk: 8
• I​mplicit: 15
• J​apt: 6
• Keg​: 6
• L​y: 13
• M​ATL: 7
• N​ibbles: 9.5
• O​hm v2: 9
• P​ip: 4
• Q​uadR: 9
• R​ProgN: 7
• S​tax: 6
• T​hunno: 8
• U​iua: 10
• V​: 4
• W​: 4
• X​Jam: 10
• Y​: 30
• Z​80Golf: 16

Tell me if I'm missing anybody.

Automatic leaderboard (experimental)

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Answer 1

Q is for QBasic, 29 characters → Score: 35

?"abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz"

Untested, but programming is like riding a bike, right?

Answer 2

S is for Scheme, 37 -> Score: 43

(display"abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz")

Answer 3

L is for LUA: 3 + 40 = 43

repeat n=1+(n or 96)print(("%c"):format(n))until(n>122)

-> 55

repeat n=1+(n or 96)print(string.char(n))until(n>122)

-> 53

for i=97,122 do print(string.char(i))end

-> 40

Answer 4

G is for GP, 30 characters -> score 32

Strchr(vectorsmall(26,i,96+i))

If I stole the 36-character C code I could submit it as a score-40 submission for PARI -- though maybe at that point I'd be required to #include <pari/pari.h> at the painful cost of an additional 23 characters.

I'm too embarrassed to submit

"abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz"

which would be printed in gp.

Answer 5

I is for International Phonetic Esoteric Language (IPEL), 19 bytes + 4 characters = 23 score

{97}{q}0ɑbesχue1søɒ

Score can be is 24 if since IPEL is acceptable.

Explanation

{97}{q}0ɑbesχue1søɒ
{97}                (push ord of "a")
    {q}0            (push loop bounds: 0 to 26. Q == 26 in base36)
        ɑ           (start loop)
         besχu      (print chr[65+index])
              e1sø  (increment index)
                  ɒ (end loop)

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I is for International Phonetic Esoteric Language (IPEL), 20 bytes + 40 4 characters = 60 24 score

{97}{26}0ɑbesχue1søɒ

Answer 6

P is for PostScript, 29 chars → Score: 39

(abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz)=

Answer 7

B, 45 -> Score: 46

main(){auto i;i=95;while(i++<122)putchar(i);}

Answer 8

E, 28 characters → Score: 29

for x in 0..25{print('a'+x)}

Answer 9

N is for newLISP, 35 characters -> Score: 42

(print"abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz")

Answer 10

L#, 28 characters → Score: 30

"abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz"

Answer 11

Z is for zsh, 31 characters -> Score: 38

echo abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

Answer 12

F is for False, 17 characters -> Score: 22

97[$123\>][$,1+]#

Answer 13

U is for Unicon, 50 + 6 = 56

procedure main();every writes(char(97 to 122));end

Answer 14

c,34 characaters -> score : 35

main(a){for(;a++<27;putch(95+a));}

Answer 15

V is for VBA - 43 (40+3) or 32 (29+3)

(formatted to run in the immediate window)

40 chars

For b=65 To 90:c=c & Chr(b):Next:Print c

And shorter, but no thinking involved:

29 chars

?"abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz"

Answer 16

A is for awk: 37 characters -> score 40

BEGIN{for(i=96;i++<122;)printf"%c",i}

Answer 17

C++, 32 + 3penalty = 35

I could not find C++. So this is my option for it:

char a=96;while(a++<122)cout<<a;

the output is:

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

PS. It's my first golf, pls comment if i did something wrong

Answer 18

Forth, 29 + 5 Score: 34

: a 123 97 do i emit loop ; a

Previous (Forth, 48 + 5 Score: 53 (unclean score = 48))

: a 97 begin dup emit 1 + dup 123 = until drop ;

This is the clean version.

: a 97 begin dup emit 1 + dup 123 = until ;

The second one leaves stuff on the stack.

a 
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz  ok

Answer 19

A is for APL, 9 characters → Score: 12

17↓43↑⎕av

Take the first 43 characters from ⎕av, then drop the first 17 of those.

(Tested in Dyalog APL)

Answer 20

A is for APL, 2 → 5

⎕a

Works on MicroAPL's APLX.

Answer 21

L is for Lua, 49 bytes → Score: 52

Previous answer for Lua had each letter printed on a new line. All on one line:

s=""for i=97,122 do s=s..("").char(i)end print(s)

Try it online!

Answer 22

m4, 26 characters -> Score: 28

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

(Hey, shinh lists it as a supported language)

Answer 23

Xtal, 31 characters -> Score: 35

"abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz".p;

Answer 24

V is for Vim, 9+3 → Score: 12

:h<_<CR>LY<C-^>P

The screen must be exactly 66 characters wide, and 8 lines high. You can check this with tput cols and tput lines.

The program should be executed with:

echo>file.txt && /bin/vim -u NONE $'+normal :h<_\xALYZQP' '+wq' file.txt && cat file.txt

As discussed in this vim scoring meta post

Answer 25

G is for Groovy, 25 -> Score: 31

('a'..'z').each{print it}

Answer 26

B is for Brainfuck, 42 Bytes + 9 = Score 51

+++++++++[>+++++++++++>+++<<-]>-->-[-<.+>]

Ungolfed and commented

+++++++++[>+++++++++++>+++<<-]  Leaves the tape with the values 99 and 27.
>--                             Subtracts 2 from 99 to make 97, the ASCII Code for an "a".
>-                              Subtracts 1 from 27 to make 26, the number of letters in the alphabet.
[-<.+>]                         Outputs the letter, adds 1 and decrements from the number of letters remaining.
                                When no letters are remaining, the loop Exits.

Answer 27

brainfuck, 60 -> 69

+++++[>+++++<-]>+>++++++++[>+++[>++++<-]<-]>>+<<<[>>>.+<<<-]

Try it online!

-2 bytes thanks to Dust

Answer 28

B is for brainfuck, 32 31 + 9 = 40

-1 byte thanks to Jo King

-[>++>+<<-----]>----->+[<.+>--]

Try it online!

-[>++>+<<-----]> is derived from the initialization part for 51 and generates the following layout: 102|51. The next part >----->+ changes this to 97|52 where 52 is double the amount of letters in the alphabet and 97 is the charcode of a. The final loop [<.+>--] prints a letter and increments the charcode and decrements the counter twice.

Answer 29

X is for x86, 9 bytes + 3 -> score 12

(or "x86 machine code" for 9 + 16 = 25)

b0 61 aa 40 3c 7a 76 fa  c3

This is a function, callable with void alpha(char edi[26]), like the x86-64 System V calling convention but in 32-bit mode. Or 16-bit mode (where 40 decodes as inc ax, otherwise the same).

The question says "program" that "prints", and this is neither of those things. I'm not sure this should count. Making a DOS .com executable out of this would take a few extra bytes, or the .text section of a Linux executable, including print and exit system calls. But there are several other answers (like some C++ ones) that are merely snippets that wouldn't even compile without #include<iostream> and int main(){.

I'm just going to follow modern codegolf defaults for I/O methods (Default for Code Golf: Input/Output methods) which include returning a string in the caller's buffer.

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An x86-64 version would cost 1 extra byte for inc al or inc eax, and 3 extra characters in the language name. I could call it x64 but that implies Windows where the standard calling convention doesn't use RDI. But that's irrelevant, this is an asm / machine-code answer which doesn't care about being called from other languages. So anyway, I could say "x64" for a 10 + 3 = 13 version, but I hate that name because it goes with using "x86" to mean specifically 32-bit, instead of the whole ISA.

Ungolfed:

                machine code     NASM/FASM source
     1                         alpha:
     2 00000000 B061               mov  al, 'a'
     3                         .loop:               ; do {
     4 00000002 AA                 stosb              ; *edi++ = al
     5 00000003 40                 inc  eax           ; more compact than inc al
     6 00000004 3C7A               cmp  al, 'z'
     7 00000006 76FA               jbe  .loop       ; }while(al<='z')
     8 00000008 C3                 ret 

Try it online! with a FASM _start caller.

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Justification: "x86 machine code" is as much a description as a name. Machine code is something you can program in and can be considered a family of languages. But those languages don't usually have names other than the ISA. I'd usually say "x86 32-bit machine code" when posting an answer like this, but that's just to make it clear the answer is the machine code, not the asm source text in the same listing.

Out of all ISAs, x86 is clearly recognizable as the name of this one. It's not a language that people regularly program in directly; usually we generate it from assembly language (or higher level languages).

"IA" (Intel Architecture) or "IA-32" are other common names for the ISA, so I could argue for a score of 11 in the letter "I". (But the only "x" answer is xtal at 35, so posting this as x86 is a more useful answer for reducing the total sum length across all letters.

Of course "x86" can be considered ambiguous between the machine code and assembly language. And without context it's not obviously a programming language because it's better known as the name of an ISA.

Answer 30

PHP, 26 characters -> Score: 29

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz