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\$\begingroup\$

Your task is to display the letter "A" alone, without anything else, except any form of trailing newlines if you cannot avoid them, doing so in a program and/or snippet. Code that returns (instead of printing) is allowed.

Both the lowercase and uppercase versions of the letter "A" are acceptable (that is, unicode U+0061 or unicode U+0041. Other character encodings that aren't Unicode are allowed, but either way, the resulting output of your code must be the latin letter "A", and not any lookalikes or homoglyphs)

You must not use any of the below characters in your code, regardless of the character encoding that you pick:

  • "A", whether uppercase or lowercase.

  • "U", whether lowercase or uppercase.

  • X, whether uppercase or lowercase.

  • +

  • &

  • #

  • 0

  • 1

  • 4

  • 5

  • 6

  • 7

  • 9

Cheating, loopholes, etc, are not allowed.

Since this is , the shortest solution, in bytes, that follows all the rules, is the winner.


Validity Checker

This Stack Snippet checks to make sure your code doesn't use the restricted characters. It might not work properly for some character encodings.

var t = prompt("Input your code.");

if (/[AaUuXx+&#0145679]/.test(t)) {
  alert("Contains a disallowed character!");
} else {
  alert("No disallowed characters");
}

This Stack Snippet that makes sure you don't have a disallowed character is also available on JSFiddle.

Leaderboard

var QUESTION_ID=90349,OVERRIDE_USER=58717;function answersUrl(e){return"https://api.stackexchange.com/2.2/questions/"+QUESTION_ID+"/answers?page="+e+"&pagesize=100&order=desc&sort=creation&site=codegolf&filter="+ANSWER_FILTER}function commentUrl(e,s){return"https://api.stackexchange.com/2.2/answers/"+s.join(";")+"/comments?page="+e+"&pagesize=100&order=desc&sort=creation&site=codegolf&filter="+COMMENT_FILTER}function getAnswers(){jQuery.ajax({url:answersUrl(answer_page++),method:"get",dataType:"jsonp",crossDomain:!0,success:function(e){answers.push.apply(answers,e.items),answers_hash=[],answer_ids=[],e.items.forEach(function(e){e.comments=[];var s=+e.share_link.match(/\d+/);answer_ids.push(s),answers_hash[s]=e}),e.has_more||(more_answers=!1),comment_page=1,getComments()}})}function getComments(){jQuery.ajax({url:commentUrl(comment_page++,answer_ids),method:"get",dataType:"jsonp",crossDomain:!0,success:function(e){e.items.forEach(function(e){e.owner.user_id===OVERRIDE_USER&&answers_hash[e.post_id].comments.push(e)}),e.has_more?getComments():more_answers?getAnswers():process()}})}function getAuthorName(e){return e.owner.display_name}function process(){var e=[];answers.forEach(function(s){var r=s.body;s.comments.forEach(function(e){OVERRIDE_REG.test(e.body)&&(r="<h1>"+e.body.replace(OVERRIDE_REG,"")+"</h1>")});var a=r.match(SCORE_REG);a&&e.push({user:getAuthorName(s),size:+a[2],language:a[1],link:s.share_link})}),e.sort(function(e,s){var r=e.size,a=s.size;return r-a});var s={},r=1,a=null,n=1;e.forEach(function(e){e.size!=a&&(n=r),a=e.size,++r;var t=jQuery("#answer-template").html();t=t.replace("{{PLACE}}",n+".").replace("{{NAME}}",e.user).replace("{{LANGUAGE}}",e.language).replace("{{SIZE}}",e.size).replace("{{LINK}}",e.link),t=jQuery(t),jQuery("#answers").append(t);var o=e.language;/<a/.test(o)&&(o=jQuery(o).text()),s[o]=s[o]||{lang:e.language,user:e.user,size:e.size,link:e.link}});var t=[];for(var o in s)s.hasOwnProperty(o)&&t.push(s[o]);t.sort(function(e,s){return e.lang>s.lang?1:e.lang<s.lang?-1:0});for(var c=0;c<t.length;++c){var i=jQuery("#language-template").html(),o=t[c];i=i.replace("{{LANGUAGE}}",o.lang).replace("{{NAME}}",o.user).replace("{{SIZE}}",o.size).replace("{{LINK}}",o.link),i=jQuery(i),jQuery("#languages").append(i)}}var ANSWER_FILTER="!t)IWYnsLAZle2tQ3KqrVveCRJfxcRLe",COMMENT_FILTER="!)Q2B_A2kjfAiU78X(md6BoYk",answers=[],answers_hash,answer_ids,answer_page=1,more_answers=!0,comment_page;getAnswers();var SCORE_REG=/<h\d>\s*([^\n,]*[^\s,]),.*?(\d+)(?=[^\n\d<>]*(?:<(?:s>[^\n<>]*<\/s>|[^\n<>]+>)[^\n\d<>]*)*<\/h\d>)/,OVERRIDE_REG=/^Override\s*header:\s*/i;
body{text-align:left!important}#answer-list,#language-list{padding:10px;width:290px;float:left}table thead{font-weight:700}table td{padding:5px}
<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="//cdn.sstatic.net/codegolf/all.css?v=83c949450c8b"> <div id="answer-list"> <h2>Leaderboard</h2> <table class="answer-list"> <thead> <tr><td></td><td>Author</td><td>Language</td><td>Size</td></tr></thead> <tbody id="answers"> </tbody> </table> </div><div id="language-list"> <h2>Winners by Language</h2> <table class="language-list"> <thead> <tr><td>Language</td><td>User</td><td>Score</td></tr></thead> <tbody id="languages"> </tbody> </table> </div><table style="display: none"> <tbody id="answer-template"> <tr><td>{{PLACE}}</td><td>{{NAME}}</td><td>{{LANGUAGE}}</td><td>{{SIZE}}</td><td><a href="{{LINK}}">Link</a></td></tr></tbody> </table> <table style="display: none"> <tbody id="language-template"> <tr><td>{{LANGUAGE}}</td><td>{{NAME}}</td><td>{{SIZE}}</td><td><a href="{{LINK}}">Link</a></td></tr></tbody> </table>

\$\endgroup\$
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  • 7
    \$\begingroup\$ @ColdGolf You seem to be saying "yes" to functions, but functions don't display, they usually return. \$\endgroup\$
    – xnor
    Commented Aug 19, 2016 at 23:06
  • 2
    \$\begingroup\$ Is ending up with a variable that contains just a also good enough ? \$\endgroup\$
    – Ton Hospel
    Commented Aug 19, 2016 at 23:17
  • 1
    \$\begingroup\$ That's not what I meant. The supposed code doing a variable assignment would not contain any of the forbidden characters. I'm just trying to understand what is covered by "display by means other than printing". If "return from a function" is OK, what about "assign to a variable" ? \$\endgroup\$
    – Ton Hospel
    Commented Aug 20, 2016 at 0:05
  • 1
    \$\begingroup\$ Why those particular characters? \$\endgroup\$ Commented Aug 22, 2016 at 1:32
  • 7
    \$\begingroup\$ @immibis A for obvious reasons. U for Unicode escape strings (\u0041 is A), X for hex escape strings (\x41), + for Unicode ordinals (U+0041), & for HTML entities, # for I actually don't know, 65 is the decimal ordinal of A, 41 is the hex ordinal of A, 97 is the decimal ordinal of a, and 0 for a few of the previous reasons. \$\endgroup\$
    – user45941
    Commented Aug 22, 2016 at 6:26

229 Answers 229

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\$\begingroup\$

Alice, 5 bytes

'bto@

Try it online!

'b    Push b as its ascii code on the stack
  t   Pop, subtract 1, push
   o@ Pop, print to stdout, exit
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0
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Perl6, 20

(?0).comb[3>2].print
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1
  • \$\begingroup\$ Also (88-23).chr.print (17 bytes, from the Ruby answer), but that's arguably degenerate. \$\endgroup\$
    – bb94
    Commented Aug 25, 2016 at 3:15
0
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Visual C++, 32 bytes

std::clog<<decltype('C')('C'-2);

or

std::clog<<decltype('C')(260>>2);

on the basis of @Karl Napf

dont know why it gets downvoted it clearly compiles on VisualC++2015 and outputs A on my Machine

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1
  • \$\begingroup\$ 1. The downvote was cast automatically by the Community user when you edited your answer. I consider this a bug. 2. I'm not fluent in C++, but this looks like a snippet. Submissions have to be full programs or functions (named or lambdas) by default. \$\endgroup\$
    – Dennis
    Commented Aug 28, 2016 at 19:52
0
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Lolo, 30 bytes

loloLo lOLo lo LOlo LO lOlolol

The only way to make characters in Lolo is to get it's number representation and convert it into a character.
Here, I get 65 which gives me A.

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0
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Pyth, 6 bytes

C-*TT3

Try It Online

Explanation

C         ASCII integer to character
  -*TT3    (Ten*Ten)-3 (97)
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0
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R, 12 bytes

LETTERS[2/2]

Pretty self-explanatory: LETTERS is all the upper case letters, and 2/2 evaluates to 1, so we get the the first element.

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0
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PHP, 19 Bytes

<?=chr(ord('C')-2);

Get the ASCII value for C and take 2 off it. Doesn't need any special encoding and will work in PHP 4, 5 and 7

If you turn errors off you can reduce it to 17:

<?=chr(ord(C)-2);
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1
  • \$\begingroup\$ turning off errors is not necessary: omitting the quotes will yield a notice; those are not printed with default settings. \$\endgroup\$
    – Titus
    Commented Nov 11, 2016 at 14:30
0
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R, 12 bytes

letters[2/2] #12 bytes; rules followed!

I tried other ways of doing this, but they broke the rules :(

tail(rev(letters),n=2/2) #24 bytes; uses 'a'
head(letters,n=2/2) #19 bytes; uses 'a'
\$\endgroup\$
0
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Forth, 19 bytes

Creates the number 65 (23*3-2-2), then outputs it as the character A.

23 3 * 2 - 2 - emit

Try it online

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0
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SmileBASIC, 12 bytes

Self-explanatory.

?CHR$(88-23)
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0
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SOGL V0.12, 2 bytes

Κ‘

Try it Here!
A simple compressed string of "A". Really it should be more than a byte (3 bits on saying that it's a character + ~6.5 bits = 8.5 bits = 1 1⁄16 bytes), but I got lucky.

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0
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Common Lisp, 33 bytes

(elt(string(type-of 3/2))(- 3 2))

type-of 3/2 returns the symbol RATIO, string transforms it into a string, and finally elt gets the character at index 1 (i.e. A).

Try it online!

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0
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AutoHotkey, 19 bytes

Send % Chr(8-2 8-3)

This types a single character, A. It does so through AHK's surprising yet convenient implicit concatenation.

Send tries to write a string. %tells it to use the value of an expression (Rather than just plaintext) Chr() converts a number to a character. 8-2 8-3 evaluates to 6 5 which evaluates to 65, the ASCII code for A.

\$\endgroup\$
0
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UNBABTIZED, 18 bytes

!0,88.(°0,23.:°0

!0,88. put 88 in cell 0

(°0.23. subtract 23 from cell 0

:°0 print cell 0 as character

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0
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VBA, 19 Bytes

Anonymous VBE immediate window function that takes no input and outputs A to the VBE immediate window

?Chr(-(-32-32-3)-2)
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0
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Recursiva, 4 bytes

Y(L'

Try it online!

Explanation:

Y(L'
Y     - From, Take n-th element 'A'
 (    - Upper-case alphabet 'ABC...Z'  
  L   - Length of i.e. 0
   '  - empty string
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0
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PHP 21 or 67 Bytes

Try it online

Kinda cheating but implode on $_SERVER just leaves a on the 8th position

<?=join($_SERVER)[8];

Else Creating an array of letter strating at chr(88) and end it at chr(33) leaves an A at position 23

<?php $u=[];for($i=88;$i>33;$i--){$u[]=chr($i);}echo join($u)[23];
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0
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Pepe, 10 bytes

reeEEeeeeE

Try it online!

reeEEeeeeE pushes a to stack and outputs it.

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0
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Japt -g, 2 bytes

;B

Test it here

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0
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Aheui (esotope), 21 bytes

밡밤다발따맣홄

Try it online!


Explanation:

밡: push 9, move cursor right by 1(→).
밤: push 4, →
다: add, →
발: push 5, →
따: mul, →
맣: print as character, →
홄: end.
\$\endgroup\$
0
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C# (.NET Core), 44 bytes

Console.Write(Convert.ToString(33-23, 8*2));

Try it online!

Converts the decimal value 10 to its hexadecimal equivalent (a).

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0
0
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MBASIC, 19 bytes

2 PRINT CHR$(88-23)

I swear I came up with this solution before finding those other (similar) BASIC answers. Apparently great minds do think alike. :-)

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0
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AppleScript, 16

string id(88-23)
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0
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Number Factory, 4 bytes

%>>%

You can test it with my interpreter.

There are several coincidences that together make this as short as it is:

  • The factory contains a room specifically for the output of letters.
  • The encoding scheme used by that room is 1-indexed.
  • The initial room contains 1.
  • The initial room and the alphabetic output room are only 2 squares apart.
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0
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Runic Enchantments, 6 bytes

'Bl-k@

Try it online!

"length of stack" acts as a placeholder for the value 1. 'Lb-k@ and 'C2-k@ both also work and are the same number of bytes.

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0
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Keg, 1 byte (SBCS)

Ȧ

Ah, yes, restricted-source challenges. The exact thing the push'n'print feature was added to Keg for. Very simple this program: just print the letter a to output.

No, it's not cheating because it's a feature designed for all restricted source challenges. And also, Ȧ doesn't have any forbidden code points.

No TIO yet because it needs a quick update but works on the Github interpreter (just make sure to use Keg.py)

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0
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BBC Basic IV, 19 15 bytes

23PRINTCHR$(88-23)

Running in an emulator

Older Answer: 19 bytes

23PRINTCHR$(8^2-(2-3))

The statement...

P.TOP-PAGE

...shows the size of the program, which is 19 bytes.

Running in an emulator

\$\endgroup\$
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  • 1
    \$\begingroup\$ PRINTCHAR has A inside. \$\endgroup\$
    – user85052
    Commented Dec 26, 2019 at 4:18
  • \$\begingroup\$ It's PRINTCHR$, there is no A. I have a typo and have corrected it. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Dec 27, 2019 at 0:19
0
\$\begingroup\$

05AB1E, 6 4 bytes

2<.b

Try it online!

Explanation

2<    # push 2 and decrement (now 1 is on the stack)
  .b  # push the [top value]th letter of the alphabet (the 1st letter)
      # implicit output
\$\endgroup\$
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  • \$\begingroup\$ So I assume this is a duplicate of another answer? \$\endgroup\$
    – user85052
    Commented Dec 25, 2019 at 4:13
  • \$\begingroup\$ @a'_' I'm not allowed to use 1 EDIT: just found a better solution \$\endgroup\$ Commented Dec 27, 2019 at 1:02
0
\$\begingroup\$

Befunge-93, 7 bytes

"}<"-,@

Try it online!

Explanation

"}<"        Push 125 and 60 using ASCII mode
    -       Subraction
     ,      Print as ASCII
      @     End the program (so you don't get AAAAAA... :) )
\$\endgroup\$
0
\$\begingroup\$

Pxem, 9 bytes (filename) + 0 bytes (content) = 9 bytes.

  • Filename: CBB.-.-.o
  • Content: none.

The code is equivalent to:

push 'B'
push 'B'
push 'C'
push(abs(pop()-pop())) if size>=2 else nop
push(abs(pop()-pop())) if size>=2 else nop
printf("%c",pop()) if size>=1 else nop
\$\endgroup\$
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