Sibling Rivalry

Question

Objective Requirements

• A main 'parent' file and a 'child' file.
• The parent file creates a new child file that contains code that must execute after creation.
• The child file that is created must delete the existing sibling file. It wants all the attention, afterall.
• No matter how many times the parent file is executed, a new child file must be created and executed.
• Every time a child file is executed, it must delete it's sibling.
• Since no two siblings are ever truly identical, each child file must also be unique.
• No matter how many child files are created, their names and file contents MUST be unique.
• Only the parent file may explicitly know the child names. (Parent may tell the new child it's older sibling's name.)
• Child files may not simply be renamed.

Things to consider

• The parent may be modified by the child (children give us all grey hairs anyways, right?), but it's methods may not change.
• The child has to kill its sibling. It cannot force its sibling to commit suicide.
• No human interaction may occur beyond the execution of the parent (such as manual input).

Winning Requirements

• Only the parent file character length / byte size will be measured.
• Fewest bytes/shortest length wins.

Inspired by this challenge.

Answer 1

Perl, 4 characters

Parent file (parent.pl):

do a

Initial child file (named a):

if ($0 =~ /parent\.pl$/)
{
    $ARGV[0]=(-f 'a' ? 'a' : <a*>);
    open B,'>'.($a='a'.time);
    print B <>,'a';
    exec "perl $a";
}
else
{
    open PARENT,'>parent.pl';
    print PARENT "do <a*>";
    close PARENT;

    while (<a*>)
    {
        if ($0 !~ /\Q$_\E$/)
        {
            unlink $_;
        }   
    }
}
#

Nowhere does the question state that a child file does not exist at the beginning. Further, it might even be interpreted as requiring an initial child file (it states that the child must delete its sibling, never mentioning a special case when a sibling does not exist).

I assert that this fulfills all the requirements stated in the question.

One might object that "the child creates its own sibling"; however, this is not true. The parent is the program which is being executed when the child is created. It just gets some code stored in another file and runs that code.

This child not only kills its sibling; it also kills anyone else who is unlucky enough to have a name starting with a (consider that collateral damage). This is an artifact of my earlier attempts at the problem. Obviously, any method of killing the sibling could be implemented without changing the score.

Answer 2

Lua, 80

n=io.open(0,'a'):write' ':seek()os.execute('echo rm '..n-1 ..' >'..n..'&sh '..n)

Parent file (filename 0) appends one character to its own body on each run and treats its new length as name of next child file (so, first child file will be given name 82 and will contain rm 81).
Lua 5.2 required.
Usage: lua 0.

Answer 3

Perl 68 bytes

utime$a+open(C,'>',$a=(stat$0)[8]),print(C"unlink~-$a"),$0;`perl $a`

Works in a similar fashion to the PHP script below, by updating its own access time to keep track of children names. As with all solutions below, the parent script may be named anything you choose.

---

PHP 87 bytes

It seems that since our parent is reproducing asexually, all it really needs to do is touch itself.

<?touch($f=__FILE__,1+$t=filemtime($f));fputs(fopen($t,w),"<?@unlink($t-1);");`php $t`;

---

PHP 110 (104) bytes

<?$f=$g=AAAAAAAA;fputs(fopen(++$f,w),"<?@unlink($g);fputs(fopen('".__FILE__."',c),'<?\$f=\$g=$f');");`php $f`;

If the parent is allowed to self-modify, a few bytes can be saved, mainly on quotation marks:

<?$f=$g=AAAAAAAA;fputs(fopen(++$f,w),"<?@unlink($g);");fputs(fopen(__FILE__,c),"<?\$f=\$g=$f");`php $f`;

Admittedly, the parent isn't very creative when naming its children. The first will be called AAAAAAAB, the second AAAAAAAC and so forth. The created child will delete its previous sibling, and modify its parent, making it somewhat 'older'.

The first child will contain the following (if the parent script is named parent.php):

<?@unlink(AAAAAAAA);fputs(fopen('parent.php',c),'<?$f=$g=AAAAAAAB');

Answer 4

python 2.7 - 110 Characters

c=0
import os
i=`c+1`
o(__file__,'r+').write('c='+i)
o('c'+i,'w').write('rm c'+`c`)
os.system('sh c'+i)

The above code would throw an error that can be ignored, the first time it is run.

A slightly longer modified version (128 characters) won;t complain the first time its run

c=0
import os
i=`c+1`
o(__file__,'r+').write('c='+i)
o('c'+i,'w').write('rm c'+`c`)
os.system('sh c'+i+'>/dev/null 2>&1')

Answer 5

PHP 279

<?php $s="00000000.php";$c="11111111.php";$n=fopen($c,"w");fwrite($n,"<?php \$h=fopen('p.php','r');\$d=fread(\$h,328);\$h=fopen('p.php','w');fwrite(\$h,'<?php \$s=\"'.basename(__FILE__).'\";\$c=\"'.hash('crc32',microtime(true)).'.php\";'.substr(\$d,42));unlink('$s');");`php $c`;

It uses crc32 as a hash function, so it's not ENTIRELY 100% unique... I'll try to think of another solution. This one does cause a warning on the first execution, but works as expected every time there-after.

Here is a semi-ungolfed readable version (changed substr() start point so it would work ungolfed as a bit of copy+pasta):

<?php
$s="02204f88.php";
$c="4b2e0cfb.php";
$n = fopen($c, "w");
fwrite($n,"<?php
\$h=fopen('p.php','r');
\$d=fread(\$h,328);
\$h=fopen('p.php','w');
fwrite(\$h,'<?php
\$s=\"'.basename(__FILE__).'\";
\$c=\"'.hash('crc32',microtime(true)).'.php\";'.substr(\$d,43));
unlink('$s');
");
exec("php $c");

Answer 6

python2 - 154

Needs a subdirectory called c to be at the same directory. Generates sh. I took the liberty of calling the file contents unique when it contains the files random (enough?) name. Seems to work although I never close the generated file.

import os,binascii
l=os.listdir("c")
n="c/"+binascii.b2a_hex(os.urandom(15))+".py"
open(n,"w+").write("rm $1\n#"+n)
for v in l:os.system("sh "+n+" c/"+v)

If we know there is ALWAYS one child, we can shorten the script to 146 bytes:

import os,binascii
l=os.listdir("c")[0]
n="c/"+binascii.b2a_hex(os.urandom(15))+".py"
open(n,"w+").write("rm $1\n#"+n)
os.system("sh "+n+" c/"+l)

Answer 7

Tcl - 131 chars

set n c[expr rand()].tcl;set f [open $n w+];puts $f [string map "@ $n" {lmap f [glob -ta -di . c*] {if {$f ne {@}} {file del $f}}}]

Not sure if I understand this correctly. (Delete all siblings, or only delete last one?)
I use glob and kill all other siblings in the same directory.
Names are unique, files are unique (contains own file name).