Evolution of "Hello World!"

Question

This contest is officially over, the winner is jimmy23013. Congratulations!

The challenge is to make a program that prints Hello World! to stdout. The catch is that your program must have a Levenshtein distance of 7 or less from the program in the answer submitted before yours.

How This Will Work

Below I have already submitted the first answer using Python: print("Hello World!").

The next person to answer must modify the string print("Hello World!") with up to 7 single character insertions, deletions, or substitutions so that when it is run in any language that hasn't been used so far (only Python in this case) the output is still Hello World!.

For example the second answerer might use 1 substitution (r -> u), 2 deletions (in), and 1 insertion (s) to make the string puts("Hello World!") which prints Hello World! when run in Ruby.

The third person to answer must do the same thing in a new language, but using the program of the second person's answer (e.g. puts("Hello World!")) as their starting point. The fourth answer will be in relation to the third answer and so on.

This will continue on until everyone get stuck because there is no new language the last answer's program can be made to run in by only changing 7 characters. The communal goal is to see how long we can keep this up, so try not to make any obscure or unwarranted character edits (this is not a requirement however).

Formatting

Please format your post like this:

# Answer N - [language]

    [code]

[notes, explanation, observations, whatever]

Where N is the answer number (increases incrementally, N = 1, 2, 3,...).

You do not have to tell which exact characters were changed. Just make sure the Levenshtein distance is from 0 to 7.

Rules

The key thing to understand about this challenge is that only one person can answer at a time and each answer depends on the one before it.

There should never be two answers with the same N. If two people happen to simultaneously answer for some N, the one who answered later (even if it's a few seconds difference) should graciously delete their answer.

Furthermore...

• A user may only submit one answer per 8 hour period. i.e. Each of your answers must be at least 8 hours apart. (This is to prevent users from constantly watching the question and answering as much as possible.)
• A user may not submit two answers in a row. (e.g. since I submitted answer 1 I can't do answer 2, but I could do 3.)
• Each answer must be in a different programming language.
  • Different versions of the same language count as the same language.
  • Languages count as distinct if they are traditionally called by two different names. (There may be some ambiguities here but don't let that ruin the contest.)
• You may only use tabs, newlines, and printable ASCII. (Newlines count as one character.)
• The output should only be Hello World! and no other characters (a leading/trailing newline is not an issue).
• If your language doesn't has stdout use whatever is commonly used for quickly outputting text (e.g. console.log or alert in JavaScript).

Please make sure your answer is valid. We don't want to realize there's a break in the chain five answers up. Invalid answers should be fixed quickly or deleted before there are additional answers.

Don't edit answers unless absolutely necessary.

Scoring

Once things settle down, the user who submits the most (valid) answers wins. Ties go to the user with the most cumulative up-votes.

Leaderboard: (out of date)

(user must have at least 2 valid answers)

11 Answers

• Optimizer - CJam, Groovy, HTML, Forth, Rebol, Markdown, CASIO BASIC, SpeakEasy, REXX, RegXy, Pawn
• jimmy23013 - GNU dc, Zsh, Burlesque, bc, Hack, GDB, QBasic, MediaWiki Markup, itflabtijtslwi, Squirrel, AGOL 68

7 Answers

• Nit - APL, Clipper, Falcon, MUMPS, FreeBASIC, csh, Dart
• Timmy - Lua, Lisp, Oz, Algoid, KTurtle, Alice, OCaml

6 Answers

• Stacey - VHDL, GNU Octave, M4, Logo, Microsoft Batch, Matlab
• Dennis - Dash, tcsh, TeX, ///, HQ9+-, Alore

5 Answers

• plannapus - Stata, Scheme, SQLite, Scala, Suneido
• Pietu1998 - PHP, sh, ALAGUF, Cardinal, Grin

4 Answers

• ypnypn - NetLogo, Mouse, Salmon, Maple
• resueman - Clojure, Emacs Lisp, Vimscript, VBScript
• Timtech - AutoLisp, Geom++, BogusForth, owl

3 Answers

• BrunoJ - CoffeeScript, F#, Betterave

2 Answers

• Mig - Extended BF Type III, TCL
• Calvin's Hobbies - Python, E
• Sp3000 - Racket, Pyth
• grc - Haskell, Turing
• es1024 - Nimrod, ksh
• FireFly - FALSE, mIRC script
• g-rocket - AppleScript, LiveCode
• Oriol - AMPL, PARI/GP
• nneonneo - Boo, Caché ObjectScript

Languages used so far:

1. Python
2. CJam
3. PHP
4. Pyth
5. Perl
6. Befunge 98
7. Bash
8. Nimrod
9. Ruby
10. GNU dc
11. Golfscript
12. Mathematica
13. R
14. Lua
15. Sage
16. Julia
17. Scilab
18. JavaScript
19. VHDL
20. HyperTalk
21. Haskell
22. LOLCODE
23. APL
24. M30W
25. Stata
26. TI-BASIC (NSpire)
27. ActionScript 2
28. J
29. PowerShell
30. K
31. Visual FoxPro
32. VBA
33. Extended BF Type III
34. Zsh
35. Dash
36. Clojure
37. NetLogo
38. Groovy
39. CoffeeScript
40. Clipper
41. B.A.S.I.C.
42. FALSE
43. fish (shell)
44. GNU Octave
45. TCL
46. E
47. newLisp
48. Lisp
49. SMT-LIBv2
50. Racket
51. Batsh
52. tcsh
53. AppleScript
54. Mouse
55. Pixie
56. F#
57. Falcon
58. Burlesque
59. HTML
60. SGML
61. M4
62. MUMPS
63. TeX
64. Forth
65. Salmon
66. Turing
67. bc
68. Betterave
69. Scheme
70. Emacs Lisp
71. Logo
72. AutoLISP
73. ///
74. Rebol
75. Maple
76. FreeBASIC
77. Vimscript
78. ksh
79. Hack
80. mIRC
81. Batch
82. Make
83. Markdown
84. sh
85. GDB
86. csh
87. HQ9+-
88. Postscript
89. Matlab
90. Oz
91. CASIO BASIC
92. VBScript
93. QBasic
94. Processing
95. C
96. Rust 0.13
97. Dart
98. Kaffeine
99. Algoid
100. AMPL
101. Alore
102. Forobj
103. T-SQL
104. LiveCode
105. Euphoria
106. SpeakEasy
107. MediaWiki
108. SmallBASIC
109. REXX
110. SQLite
111. TPP
112. Geom++
113. SQL (postgres)
114. itflabtijtslwi
115. RegXy
116. Opal.rb
117. Squirrel
118. Pawn
119. Scala
120. Rebmu
121. Boo
122. PARI/GP
123. Red
124. Swift
125. BeanShell
126. Vala
127. Pike
128. Suneido
129. AWK
130. Neko
131. AngelScript
132. gosu
133. V
134. ALAGUF
135. BogusForth
136. Flaming Thunder
137. Caché ObjectScript
138. owl
139. Cardinal
140. Parser
141. Grin
142. Kitten
143. TwoDucks
144. Asymptote
145. CAT
146. IDL
147. Tiny
148. WTFZOMFG
149. Io
150. MuPAD
151. Java
152. Onyx
153. JBoss
154. S+
155. Hexish
156. yash
157. Improbable
158. wake
159. brat
160. busybox built-in shell
161. gammaplex
162. KTurtle
163. AGOL 68
164. Alice
165. SML/NJ
166. OCaml
167. CDuce
168. Underload
169. Simplex v.0.6
170. Minkolang 0.9
171. Fexl 7.0.3
172. Jolf
173. Vitsy
174. Y
175. Retina
176. Codename Dragon
177. Seriously
178. Reng v.3.3
179. Fuzzy Octo Guacamole
180. 05AB1E

^{(Feel free to edit these lists if they are incorrect or out of date.)}

This question works best when you sort by oldest.

NOTE: This is a trial question for a new challenge type I have in mind where each answer depends on the last and increases in difficulty. Come discuss it with us in the chatroom for this question or in meta.

Answer 1

Answer 73 - ///

/<vsh  o[.]c;cat;#&&alert"  "
(princ//Hello World!/);%!#bye";dnl</vsh>~

Distance 7 from answer 72.

Answer 2

Answer 16 - Julia

println("Hello World!")

Distance from 15 = 2

Answer 3

Answer 18 - JavaScript

alert("Hello World!");

---

Lev. Dist from A#17 = 5

Answer 4

Answer 25 - Stata

display "Hello World!"

Distance: 6 ([-> ", ]-> ", and addition of di and pl)

Answer 5

Answer 24 - M30W

say [Hello World!]

Distance: 5

Answer 6

Answer 27 - ActionScript 2

trace("Hello World!")

Distance: 7 (Disp -> trac = 4, +e( = 2, +) = 1 = 4+2+1 = 7)

From Answer 26

Answer 7

Answer 36 - Clojure

;ah="*#[.>]trac":;cat<<@
(pr"Hello World!"
)

Distance 7 from answer 35

; makes the rest of the line a comment, and (pr "Hello World!") does the printing

Answer 8

Answer 60 - SGML

Heck, if HTML counts…

<vsh  o[.]c;cat;#&&alert" ">Hello World!</vsh>

Distance from Answer 59 : 7

Answer 9

Answer 121 -

#{//-##[][/]#i--#main(){println(
#//sel/.*}}
print("Hello World!") 
#;//"-##[;]#bye</>%"

Happy Halloween!

Distance 7 from Answer 120. Nothing fancy: added three # comment characters, and added rint after p.

Boo has syntax inspired by Python, but is a separate language with unique features built on the .NET CLI.

Answer 10

Answer 9- Ruby

puts "\x48ello World!"

Distance: 4

Answer 11

Answer 13 - R

#[puts];
cat("Hello World!")

Distance = 5

Answer 12

Answer 20 - HyperTalk

answer "Hello World!"

Distance: 7

Answer 13

Answer 31 - Visual FoxPro

*#]trac
? "Hello World!"

Distance: 3 from Answer 30

Not tested of course, but * begins a comment and ? "String" prints String.

Answer 14

Answer 70 - Emacs Lisp

;dnl<vsh  o[.]c;cat;#&&alert" ">w ".in
(print "Hello World!") ;%!#bye";dnl</vsh>~

Distance of 7 from Answer 69. Didn't need any changes to compile, but cleans up a bit.

Answer 15

Answer 96 - Rust 0.13

fn//[]([.]c;
main()    {
    print!("Hello World!");}
//#[;]#bye;dnl</>

Distance 6 from answer 95.

Answer 16

Answer 107 - MediaWiki markup

{|--#[][.]#i--#main()   {puts(,
Hello World!
|--#[;]#bye;dnl</>"%

There is already HTML, SGML and Markdown. Why not MediaWiki?

You can see it here.

Distance 7 from Answer 106.

Answer 17

Answer 32 - VBA

a="*#]trac":? "Hello World!"

Distance: 7 from Answer 31

Runs from the immediate window. The colon : is a line sepator that allows multiple lines of code to be written on the same line. (Anything run from the immediate window has to be a one liner.) The ? is a shortcut for printing to the immediate window.

Answer 18

Answer 167 - CDuce

(*#class jux{public static void main(String[] h){#
#System.Console.Writeln(//@\//Hello*}}print,cat<<#*)
print "Hello World!"(*)#X` ;}}//printputsx;//-##E;]bye</>%#*)

Distance 7 from Answer 166, removed _string

Nothing special, most difficult part was finding the language.

(* *) makes a multiline comment, print prints the string

Answer 19

Answer 17 - Scilab

disp("Hello World!")

Distance = 6 to Answer 16

Answer 20

Answer 50 - Racket

;@echo o#[.>]tac";cat<<;#&&alert 
(print "Hello World!");\

Distance is 7 from the previous answer. Needs to be run in the shell.

Answer 21

Answer 62 - MUMPS

;dnl<vsh  o[.]c;cat;#&&alert" ">
w "Hello World!";dnl</vsh>

Distance: 6

Answer 22

Answer 88 - Postscript

%#[]([.]c;main()
    /eco (Hello World!)=
%#[;]:;#bye;dnl</>

Distance: 6 insertions to answer 87.

Back to real programming languages.

Answer 23

Answer 120 - Rebmu

{//-##[][/]#i--#main(){println(
//sel/.*}}
p("Hello World!") 
;//"-##[;]#bye</>%"

Distance 7 from Answer 119

• { and } are asymmetric string delimiters for an alternate representation of strings permitting balanced nested pairs, embedded quotes, etc. {Hey {it's} "legal"}. Add one at the beginning then two braces to create a balanced string after the .* cost 3

• Standalone string literals not passed to any function are skipped by the evaluator, so that literal has no effect.

• At the outset of the program, P is a single character abbreviation for PR, itself an abbreviation for PRINT. (If you wanted you could overwrite it and use as a variable in code golf and still access printing through PR, and if you overwrite that you could use PRINT. Or set X to point to the function value of P before you override it, etc.) cost 1

• Parentheses are structural elements that can be used for arbitrary purposes (imagine if Lisp had [] and () as different "flavors" of series you could metaprogram with, with [] having the traditional "list" behavior). In the default evaluator parens just do precedence, so there's no significance to putting it around a string literal. Added a paren instead of subtracting in case it would be helpful, either way it's cost 1

• Semicolon comments to end of line, get rid of last line using that with an insertion so that the comment comes after it. (Would have been 1 cheaper to do that with the first 2 lines but this is perhaps a better setup.) cost 1

• Spend extra random character to join println onto main(){ cost 1

Answer 24

Answer 168 Underload

(*#class jux{public static void main(String[] h){#
#System.Console.Writeln(//@\//Hello*}}print,cat<<#*)
pint)(Hello World!)S(#X` ;}}//printputsx;//-##E;]bye</>%#*)

Distance 7 from Answer 167

Answer 25

Answer 34 - Zsh

ah="*#[.>]trac":;<<@
Hello World!
@

Distance: 7 from Answer 33.

Answer 26

Since I can't craft the solution I wanted to go with from the previous one, here's another solution instead:

Answer 40 - Clipper

*#//;ah="*#[.>]trac":;cat<<@
&&alert 
? "Hello World!"

NB: There is a trailing space at the end of line 2.
Distance: 6

Clipper is unique in that it has four different commenting techniques of which I've used two above:

* A comment
// A comment
&& A comment
/* A multiline
comment */

? is obviously the print command.

Answer 27

Answer 48 - Lisp

;@echo o#[.>]trac";cat<<
;#&&alert 
(princ "Hello World!");\

Distance = 7

Answer 28

Answer 54 - Mouse

~//echo o[.>]c;cat<<;#&&alert (printf
"Hello World!"$

Distance 7 from Answer 53.

Answer 29

Answer 61 - M4

dnl<vsh  o[.]c;cat;#&&alert" ">
Hello World!dnl</vsh>

Distance from Answer 60 : 7

Answer 30

Answer 63 - TeX

%;dnl<vsh  o[.]c;cat;#&&alert" ">w "
Hello World!\bye";dnl</vsh>

Distance 7 from answer 62.