Tips for golfing in LOLCODE

Question

What general tips do you have for golfing in LOLCODE? I'm looking for ideas that can be applied to code golf problems in general that are at least somewhat specific to LOLCODE. (e.g. "remove comments" is not an answer). Please post one tip per answer.

Answer 1

Define variables using the syntax variable R value rather than I HAS A variable ITZ value.

If you want to set a variable n equal to 1,

n R 1

is only 5 bytes, whereas

I HAS A n ITZ 1

is 15 bytes.

Answer 2

In many cases it's shorter to read variable values from STDIN rather than defining a function. However, note that GIMMEH, which reads input from STDIN, always reads a YARN (i.e. string). But you can take advantage of LOLCODE's dynamic typing and add 0 to convert to a NUMBR.

For example,

GIMMEH n
n R SUM OF n AN 0    
... (operations on n)

Defining n is 26 bytes, including newlines. Compare this to a user-defined function:

HOW DUZ I f YR n
    ... (operations on n)
IF U SAY SO

This requires 28 bytes.

Note that you could also multiply by 1 to convert to a NUMBR, but that requires 4 more bytes than the sum:

GIMMEH n
n R PRODUKT OF n AN 1

Answer 3

In many LOLCODE implementations, such as the one on repl.it, HAI and KTHXBYE, which begin and end programs respectively, are unnecessary. In implementations in which they are necessary, the version number after HAI isn't necessary (e.g. HAI 1.2).

Similarly, the STDIO library is typically loaded by default, so CAN HAS STDIO? is also unnecessary.

Answer 4

When printing the value of a variable to STDOUT, consider the following:

VISIBLE variable

is much shorter than

VISIBLE ":{variable}"

Also, whenever a trailing newline is acceptable,

VISIBLE variable

which includes a trailing newline by default, is shorter than

VISIBLE variable!

which suppresses the newline.

Answer 5

Many operators have optional ANs in between them, as defined in the spec. For example:

SMOOSH "hello" AN ", world" MKAY

can be turned into this:

SMOOSH "hello" ", world" MKAY

Other operators that support this include BOTH, EITHER, WON, ALL, ANY, BOTH SAEM, and DIFFRINT. For some reason, the numerical operators don't allow you to remove the AN, though.

The spec also says, specifically for SMOOSH, that:

The line ending may safely implicitly close the SMOOSH operator without needing an MKAY.

Meaning this code should also be valid:

SMOOSH "hello" ", world"

However, the current version of lci doesn't seem to accept this behaviour :(

Answer 6

LOLCODE (surprisingly) doesn't actually need indentation, meaning you can turn this:

HOW IZ I FIB YR N
    I HAS A SML ITZ SMALLR OF N AN 1
    BOTH SAEM N AN SML
    O RLY?
        YA RLY
            FOUND YR 1
        NO WAI
            I HAS A FIRST ITZ I IZ FIB YR DIFF OF N AN 1 MKAY
            I HAS A SECOND ITZ I IZ FIB YR DIFF OF N AN 2 MKAY
            FOUND YR SUM OF FIRST AN SECOND
    OIC
IF U SAY SO

Into this:

HOW IZ I FIB YR N
I HAS A SML ITZ SMALLR OF N AN 1
BOTH SAEM N AN SML
O RLY?
YA RLY
FOUND YR 1
NO WAI
I HAS A FIRST ITZ I IZ FIB YR DIFF OF N AN 1 MKAY
I HAS A SECOND ITZ I IZ FIB YR DIFF OF N AN 2 MKAY
FOUND YR SUM OF FIRST AN SECOND
OIC
IF U SAY SO