Print the last, middle and first character of your code

Question

The challenge is simple: Print the last, middle, and first character of your program's source code, in that order.

The middle character is defined as follows, assuming a source length of n characters, and 1-indexing:

• If n is even, print the n/2-th and n/2 + 1-th character. (abcdef == cd)
• If n is odd, print (n-1)/2 + 1-th character. (abcde == c)

Rules

• Given no input, print the last, middle, and first character in your source code, in the form [last][middle][first]. This will be 3-4 characters long.
• Output must not contain any trailing whitespace. However, if whitespace is a first, middle, or last character, it must be printed as such.
• Source code must be n >= 3 characters long.
• Code must consist of >= 3 unique characters.
• Standard loopholes are forbidden.
• This is code-golf, so shortest solution in characters wins.

Samples

# Form: [code] --> [output]
xyz --> zyx
abcd --> dbca
1 --> # not allowed: too short
abcde --> eca
aaabb --> # not allowed: not enough unique characters
System.out.print("S;pr"); --> ;prS
this is a test --> ts t
123[newline]45 --> 53[newline]1

Challenge Proposal

Answer 1

JavaScript, 9 7 bytes

N=>a=-N

Outputs: NaN

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Answer 2

Grass, 17 bytes

wWWwwwVVwWWwWWWww

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-2 bytes thanks to jimmy23013.

Outputs www. Grass ignores all characters apart from w, W and v. The two Vs are thus ignored; they are there to ensure the middle character is a w – I have no idea how to output v or W in Grass… I could have used another character instead of V, but V preserves the aesthetic of the code.

Answer 3

brainfuck, 17 bytes

U-[>+<-UU--]>...U

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With unprintables this can be reduced to 7 bytes: ␀..␀_.␀

Answer 4

Shakespeare Programming Language, 119 bytes

 ,.Ajax,.Page,.Act I:.Scene I:.[Enter Ajax and Page]
Ajax:  You big big big big big cat.Speak thy.Speak thy.Speak thy. 

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Prints three spaces. Without printing spaces:

Shakespeare Programming Language, 227 bytes

,.Ajax,.Page,.Act I:.Scene I:.[Enter Ajax and Page]Ajax:You is the sum of a big big big big big big cat a big pig.
You is the sum of you a large huge large big pig.
Speak thy.Speak thy.You is the sum of you a big pig.Speak thy.

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Like my newline-free INTERCAL answer, this is constructed to make the last character of the program the same as the middle character (although in this case it is not also the first), by un-golfing the second half of the code until they match. (I'm not sure if I could have constructed 46 in fewer bytes or not, or if I could have golfed other parts of the first half more.)

Answer 5

Python 2, 13 11 bytes

print' t' 

To make the whitespace clear:

$ xxd solution.py
0000000: 0a70 7269 6e74 2720 7427 20           .print' t'
$ python2 solution.py | xxd
0000000: 2074 0a                                t.

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_{-2 bytes, thanks to wastl !}

Answer 6

RProgN 2, 3 bytes

1
0

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I think this is valid?

Answer 7

05AB1E, 7 5 bytes

„ RR

Outputs R \n.

-2 bytes by taking inspiration from @Neil's Batch answer, so make sure to upvote him as well!

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5 bytes alternative by @Grimy:

12,1

Outputs 12\n.

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Initial 7 bytes answer:

'?„«'«?

Outputs ?«'.

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Explanation:

          # No-op newline
„ R       # Push 2-char string " R"
   R      # Reverse this string to "R "
          # (output the result implicitly with trailing newline)

          # No-op newline
12,       # Print 12 with trailing newline
   1      # Push a 1 (no implicit printing, since we already did an explicit print)

'?       '# Push 1-char string "?"
  „«'    '# Push 2-char string "«'"
     «    # Concatenate them both together
      ?   # Output without trailing newline

Answer 8

PHP, 9 bytes

<?=";;<";

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Answer 9

Jelly, 5 bytes

001 0

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The output has two distinct characters, but the code also has a third one.

Trivial 4-byte version:

1231

Answer 10

Excel, 9 bytes

=("))=" )

So many Parentheses.

Note: The returned middle character can actually be any character since it's the middle of the code.

Answer 11

Ruby, 6 bytes

p " "

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This outputs " " plus a newline. The code ends with a ", the middle two characters are and ", and it starts with a newline.

Answer 12

DOS/Windows Batch Language, 9 bytes

@echo @o@

Answer 13

Ruby, 11 9 bytes

print:ptp

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Answer 14

Batch, 9 characters

@echo hh

The middle and last character are both h, and then the echo prints a newline by default, which is the first character of the script.

Answer 15

PowerShell, 3 bytes

00000000: 0a0d 31                                  ..1

Works only in Microsoft Windows.

The output is unfortunately 8 bytes in UTF-16. But the question says output the characters, and not the bytes. Arguably UTF-16 is just one of the supported ways to represent the characters in PowerShell. They are not interpreted differently from an ASCII file.

Answer 16

Bash (15 11 characters)

echo -n e-e

which prints out

e-e

• -4 chars by not using |rev

Answer 17

ArnoldC, 61 bytes

IT'S SHOWTIME
TALK TO THE HAND "D I"
YOU HAVE BEEN TERMINATED

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Trivial answer in ArnoldC. The 31st byte is the space just before the string literal.

Answer 18

Underload, 9 bytes 7 bytes

Thanks to Khuldraeseth na'Barya for the improved solution!

W(SSW)S

As for as I can tell, this is now unimprovable since:

• The first character has to be a no-op character, since every other instruction raises an error due to the stack being empty, with the exception being an opening bracket. However, it can't be that since there is no way to output an opening bracket on it's own in Underload.
• You need to use at least 5 characters to add the 3 output characters to the stack.
• You need to use S to output it.

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Answer 19

Shakespeare Programming Language, 163 153 bytes

-10 bytes thanks to Jo King.

B,.Ajax,.Page,.Act I:.Scene I:.[Enter Ajax and Page]Ajax:You is
the sum ofa Big Big Big BIG BIG cat a
CAT.Speak thy.You is twice you.Speak thy!SPEAK THY!

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My first SPL answer! Outputs !BB.

There is another SPL answer by Unrelated String; in that answer, they output only spaces in 119 bytes, or output non-space characters in 227 bytes. This one comes in between, and also outputs non-space characters.

Two tricks are used here:

1. An SPL sentence can end with ! rather than ., and ! is easier to get since its ASCII codepoint is 33 (=\$2^5+1\$), whereas the codepoint of . is 46.
2. Doubling 33 gives 66, the codepoint of B, hence the play title is B and I need the second "big" to be "Big", which works since SPL is case-insensitive.

Since I needed that capital B and an exclamation mark at the end, I decided to have Ajax shout louder and louder through the scene.

Answer 20

CJam, 7 bytes

'@'' _@

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Answer 21

Befunge-93, 7 bytes

.",  @0

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Explanation

Output is 0 .

.       pop value (0) from stack, output as number with a trailing space
 "      toggle string mode, wraps around and pushes every char to the stack
  ,     pop value (".") from stack, output as character 
        spaces are no-ops
     @  end the program
      0 trailing 0 to match the output

Answer 22

APL (Dyalog Unicode), 5 4 bytes

Full programs.

Boring solution from J.Sallé:

1231

Prints that number. A much more interesting solution:

010E1

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APL ignores leading zeros, so this is simply scaled format for 10×10¹=100.

Answer 23

Chef, 447 bytes

Last Middle First Milkshake.

This recipe prints its last, middle and first character.
You could also use it to make a milkshake. 

Ingredients.
76 ml milk
32 ml chocolate syrup
46 teaspoons vanilla ice cream

Method.
Liquefy vanilla ice cream.
Put the milk into 1st mixing bowl.
Put the chocolate syrup into 1st mixing bowl.
Put the vanilla ice cream into 1st mixing bowl.
Pour contents of the 1st mixing bowl into the 1st baking dish.

Serves 1.

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A serious submission, 196 177 bytes

thanks to A__

R.

Ingredients.
82 l a
103 l b
46 l c

Method.
Put a into mixing bowl.
Put b into mixing bowl.
Put c into mixing bowl.
Pour contents of mixing bowl into baking dish.

Serves 1.

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Answer 24

Python 3, 19 bytes 13 bytes

print( ')(')

The print function appends a newline by default so the code starts with a newline. The last character of the code is a ")" so that's printed first. To make the number of characters uneven, a space in inserted before the argument of the print function. Please excuse the salaciousness of the code.

Outputs: )(\n

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Answer 25

Whitespace, 31 29 bytes

[S aS S T   S S S S S N
_Push_32][S N
S _Duplicate_32][S N
S _Duplicate_32][T  N
S S _Print_as_character][T  N
S S _Print_as_character][T  N
S S _Print_as_character]

-2 bytes thanks to @RobinRyder.

Letters S (space), T (tab), and N (new-line) added as highlighting only.
[..._some_action] added as explanation only.

Try it online (with raw spaces, tabs, and new-lines only).

Contains a no-op a (can be any non-whitespace character) to make the length odd. It is added before the first halve of the program so the middle character is a space as well, since the middle character would have become a newline if it was at the second halve of the program. All non-whitespace characters are ignored in Whitespace programs.

Answer 26

Haskell, 17 bytes

main=putStr"\"Sm"

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Answer 27

MathGolf, 5 4 bytes

1231

-1 byte by using the trivial solution presented by @ErikTheOutgolfer in his Jelly answer, which works for any language with implicit output without trailing newline.

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Original 5 bytes answer:

ùù xx

Outputs x ù.

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Explanation:

ùù x   # Push 3-char string "ù x"
    x  # Reverse it to "x ù"
       # (output the entire string joined together implicitly without trailing newline)

Answer 28

Brain-Flak, 11 bytes

((((
))))

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Explanation

We need to put 3 things on the stack. The fastest way to do that is to put 3 1s (or zeros) on the stack. Now since
(code point 1) does nothing in Brain-Flak we can add these to the program at the first middle and last places. Now this feels a bit cheaty so here are two more answers that are less cheaty in my opinion.

Prints braces, 31 bytes

( (((((()()()()()){}){}){}))())

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This answer prints braces so that the characters printed are actually relevant to the code, it does have one padding character to make the length odd so we only have to print 1 middle character.

Contains only braces, 32 bytes

(((()((((()(()()){}){}){}){}))))

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This is a braces only program both the source and (consequently) the output are made up entirely of braces (character Brain-Flak actually cares about).

Answer 29

AsciiDots - 9 bytes

.---$'.$.

Output: .$.

The code starts with a ., ends with a ., and the middle character is a $. The single quote in the middle sets the dot print mode to simply read characters straight into the output stream.

It is possible that this could be made smaller, but I'm starting to doubt that it can. In order to print three characters, the single quote must be used, as the double quote would require an end to the string in order to output. However, this means that the single quote has to a) be followed by three characters and b) cannot be the center character. In order to crunch this down to seven bytes, I was considering trying to reuse the dot's start as one of the printed characters (sort of like AsciiDot's quine program). However, I found that the shortest sequence available for printing was ($' which would have had to print four characters in the space of three, or three characters in the space of four. I also tried some hacky alternative methods like trying to print the dot's value (which is 0) as one of the characters. While there may be some system that works, I've found these to be rather complex and large. Thus, I think that the above is the smallest solution. (I will update if I find something smaller)

Answer 30

MATLAB, 1315 bytes

disp(  ') d')

Outputs ) d

Previous version (15 bytes, less strict output):

'''';1;''''''''

Outputs '''