Average Two Letters

Question

Introduction

Every letter in the English alphabet can be represented as an ASCII code. For example, a is 97, and S is 83. As we all know, the formula for averaging two numbers \$x\$ and \$y\$ is \$\frac{x+y}{2}\$. I'm pretty sure you can see where this is going. Your challenge is to average two letters.

Challenge

Your program must take two letters as input, and output the average of the ASCII values in it. If the average is a decimal, you should truncate it.

• Input will always be two ASCII letters. You can assume they will always be valid, but the case may vary. Basically, both letters will be in the range 97-122 or 65-90. The second letter will always have a greater ASCII value than the first. If your language has no method of input, you may take input from command line arguments or from a variable.
• You must output the ASCII character signified by the average of the two numbers. As stated above, it should always be truncated to 0 decimal places. If your language has no method of output, you may store it in a variable. Exit codes and return values are considered valid output methods.

Example I/O

• Input: A, C
Output: B
• Input: a, z
Output: m
• Input: d, j
Output: g
• Input: B, e
Output: S
• Input: Z, a
Output: ]

Rules

This is code-golf, so shortest answer in bytes wins!

Answer 1

PowerShell, 32 bytes

$args|%{$s+=+$_}
[char]($s-shr1)

Try it online!

Answer 2

Pari/GP, 57 bytes

fun(x,y)=Strchr(floor((Vecsmall(x)[1]+Vecsmall(y)[1])/2))

Try it online!

Description

• Vecsmall(x)[1] gives the ASCII number of x.

• Vecsmall(y)[1] gives the ASCII number of y.

• /2 gives the average.

• floor() truncates the average.

• Strchr() converts the average to its ASCII character.

Answer 3

PHP (7.4), 34 bytes

fn($a,$b)=>chr(ord($a)+ord($b)>>1)

Try it online!

Answer 4

Ceylon (named function) 74 68 65 64 60

Contrary to e.g. Java, in Ceylon you can't directly add characters (The compiler complains with Left operand must be of summable type: Character is not a subtype of Summable). Instead, we first need to convert it to an integer, and afterwards back to character. This gives 74 bytes:

Character c(Character x,Character y)=>((x.integer+y.integer)/2).character;

We can write this shorter by using the .hash attribute instead of the .integer attribute, which for characters turns out to have the same implementation (returning the Unicode value of a character). This is 68 bytes:

Character d(Character x,Character y)=>((x.hash+y.hash)/2).character;

A more ceylonic way of doing this is to use the fact that Character is a Enumerable type, and implements the .neighbour and .offset methods. The average has an offset from the smaller which is half as large as the offset of the larger to the smaller. This even turns out slightly smaller, with 65 bytes.

Character a(Character x,Character y)=>x.neighbour(y.offset(x)/2);

Unfortunately most of this is the declaration of the types. We can reduce this slightly by having the method take a sequence (tuple/pair) of two characters instead of both individually – this removes one parameter, but adds [...] several times, coming to 64 bytes:

Character b(Character[2]c)=>c[0].neighbour(c[1].offset(c[0])/2);

An alternative way of making the type declaration shorter is an alias declaration. This only is worthwile from 3 usages of Character, which we have here, reaching 60 bytes:

alias C=>Character;C e(C x,C y)=>x.neighbour(y.offset(x)/2);

(The .hash version with alias comes to 63 bytes.)

Try all the examples online

Answer 5

Wren, 67 bytes

There should be a Wren answer for every Lua answer.

Fn.new{|a|String.fromCodePoint((a.bytes.reduce{|a,i|a+i}/2).floor)}

Try it online!

Answer 6

Javascript, 59 53 Bytes

i=>String.fromCharCode(Buffer.from(i).reduce((t,v)=>t+v)/2)

i=>String.fromCharCode((b=Buffer.from(i))[0]+b[1]>>1)

> f('ae')
'c'
> f('ab')
'a'
> f('ac')
'b'
> f('ad')
'b'
> f('ae')
'c'
> f('aZ')
']'
> f('Be')
'S'

Bonus (Sorry if off topic, I'm not sure if this is allowed and couldn't find anything with a quick check. Please advise if this is actually a viable answer or not), here is the first answer written as NodeJS REPL input (making use of tabs to complete partial names):

i=>St .f h (Bu .f (i).reduce((t,v)=>t+v)/2) (43 bytes)

Note tabs might be malformed by page formatting. Note pasting anything after the tab will suppress completion on some terminals.

Answer 7

Whitespace, 45 bytes

[S S S N
_Push_0][S N
S _Duplicate_0][T   N
T   S _Read_char_from_STDIN][T  T   T   _Retrieve][S N
S _Duplicate][S N
S _Duplicate][T N
T   S _Read_char_from_STDIN][T  T   T   _Retrieve][T    S S S _Add][S S S T S N
_Push_2][T  S T S _Integer_divide][T    N
S S _Print_as_character]

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).

Explanation:

Character inputs in Whitespace are always stored as unicode integers, so we don't have to do an explicit conversion manually. The program has the following pseudo-code:

int a = STDIN as character
int b = STDIN as character
int c = (a+b) integer-divided by 2
Print c as character to STDOUT

I also use the first input as a heap-address for the second input, since it's guaranteed to be non-negative. This saves a byte by using SNS (duplicate) twice instead of SSSN + SNS (push 0 and duplicate).

Answer 8

brainfuck, 46 bytes

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

Try it online!

,>,                             Takes input into cells 0 and 1
[-<+>]                          Sums the two values, storing the result in cell 0
++<                             Sets cell 1 to 2, and returns to cell 0
[->-[>+>>]>[+[-<+>]>+>>]<<<<<]  Divides cell 0 by cell 1
>>>.                            Moves to and outputs cell 3, where the quotient is stored

Answer 9

(e)Lisp, 50 bytes

(insert (/ (+ (aref (read) 0) (aref (read) 0)) 2))

Answer 10

CJam, 10 bytes

rcirci+2/c

Try it online!

Answer 11

T-SQL, 64 bytes

declare @ char='Z',@2 char='a'print char((ascii(@)+ascii(@2))/2)

assuming @ and @2 the input.

37 bytes if only put:

print char((ascii('B')+ascii('C'))/2)

Answer 12

T-SQL, 32 bytes

SELECT CHAR(AVG(ASCII(c)))FROM i

Input is taken via a pre-existing table \$i\$ with CHAR(1) column \$c\$, per our IO standards.

The two input characters are entered as separate rows. (Note that because SQL is set-based, this will calculate the average of an arbitrary number of inputs.)

Answer 13

C (gcc), 22 bytes

Saved 0 bytes, but got a giggle, thanks to @ceilingcat!

(*c)()=L"\xd137048d쏸";

Try it online!

Answer 14

shortC, 12 8 bytes

APG+G>>1

Try it online!

Please advise on golfing skeeels.

Answer 15

1+, 25 23 bytes

,,+11##1+"\"/^"+1+<1+#;

Try it online!

Answer 16

Husk, 3 bytes

c½Σ

Try it online!

Input as a two character string.

Answer 17

Zsh, 27 bytes

Not as original as @manatwork's solution, but shorter. Try it online!

<<<${(#)$(((##$1+##$2)/2))}

Alternative for 30 bytes: printf \\$[[##8](##$1+##$2)/2]

Answer 18

Piet (ASCII-Piet), 12 bytes

jN LnN FjCjJ

ASCII-Piet is a compact encoding for the image-based esolang Piet that encodes each pixel (or codel) of Piet code as a single ASCII character. This ASCII-Piet code translates into the following program:

Or enlarged to codel size 25:

Edit: fixed the enlarged version, and golfed two bytes off by rotating the program.

Simply takes two characters from input (Piet can only represent chars on the stack by codepoints), sums them, divides by two, and outputs the result char.

Answer 19

Vyxal, 3 bytes

CṁC

Try it Online!

Explanation

CṁC
     (implicit input)
C    Convert to character code list
 ṁ   Get average
  C  Convert back to letter

Answer 20

ABAP

    SELECTION-SCREEN BEGIN OF BLOCK b0.
    PARAMETERS: p_first  TYPE c LOWER CASE OBLIGATORY,
                p_second TYPE c LOWER CASE OBLIGATORY.
    SELECTION-SCREEN END OF BLOCK b0.

    START-OF-SELECTION.
    
    WRITE / cl_abap_conv_in_ce=>uccpi( uccp =
         (
            ( cl_abap_conv_out_ce=>uccpi( char = p_first )
              + cl_abap_conv_out_ce=>uccpi( char = p_second ) ) / 2 )
          ).

Answer 21

><> (Fish), 5 bytes

+2,o;

Try it

Answer 22

Thunno 2 B, 2 bytes

mC

Attempt This Online!

mC  # implicit input, B flag converts string to byte array
m   # mean
 C  # convert to letter

Answer 23

PHP 7.3, 52 51 bytes

-1 byte thanks to manatwork

$x=function($a,$b){echo chr((ord($a)+ord($b))/2);};

Try it online!

Answer 24

Vyxal 2.4.1 K, 2 bytes

ṁC

Try it Online!

Answer 25

Java (JDK), 20 ²¹ bytes

-1 byte after seeing in other languages that [...]>>1 is a shorter way to do ([...])/2 because it has less operator priority!

A 2-parameters problem is the only moment where the double lambda can shine!

a->b->(char)(a+b>>1)

Try it online!

Answer 26

C, 17 bytes

f(a,b){a=a+b>>1;}

At first I thought

f(a,b){a=(a+b)/2;}

was the best but then I remembered Cs operation precedent and realized it would be shorter to shift right by 1.

Answer 27

Trilangle, 8 bytes

ii2+d@'o

Try it in the online interpreter!

Takes the two letters on stdin with no separator. Very straightforward, putchar((getchar() + getchar()) / 2).

Answer 28

Julia 1.0, ^{24 21} 14 bytes

a\b=a+(b-a)÷2

Try it online!

Answer 29

05AB1E, 4 bytes

ÇÅAç

Try it online! or verify all test cases

Explanation

Ç    | Get ASCII values of both inputs
 ÅA  | Take the mean
   ç | Convert to ASCII char

Answer 30

Perl 5 -p, 22 bytes

$_=chr+(ord(<>)+ord)/2

Try it online!