The Letter A without A

Question

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 code-golf, 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

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Answer 1

reticular, 9 bytes

"C"c2-co;

Try it online!

This is basically C converted from a char to a char code, subtracting two, converting back to a char, printing it with o, then finally terminating it with ;.

Answer 2

Fission, 5 bytes

R'B_O

Try it online!

How it works

R      Spawn an atom that moves to the right.
 'B    Set the atom's mass to 'B'.
   _   Decrement the atom's mass.
    O  Print the character that corresponds to the atoms mass and destroy the atom.

Answer 3

PHP, 12 bytes

<?=chr(833);

Due to an overflow the above produces an 'A' (see example 2 of the PHP doc).

Answer 4

Python 3, 18 17 bytes

print(chr(88-23))

Prints the Unicode value 0x41 = 65 - credit SnoringFrog

Previous answers

print(str(int)[3])

Prints index 3 (the fourth character) of the string "<class 'int'>":

print(chr(33*3-2))

Prints the Unicode value 0x61 = 97

Answer 5

DC, 6 bytes

3BFFvP

...spits out an A and nothing else.

Answer 6

JavaScript ES6 ES5, 23 17 12

12 bytes

`${!3}`[3-2]

17 bytes: (typeof!3)[2- -3]

23 bytes: _=()=>(typeof!3)[2- -3]

Edit 05/10/2016: Took advantage of templating strings, as well as boolean coercion and string/array indexing... Also realized my previous code used +, I could always salvage 2+3 as 2- -3 at a cost of 2 bytes for each previous example... (Updated code and scores for previous submissions)

Edit 30/08/2016:

I took a different approach, exploiting the fat arrow functions as well as the typeof return type, which is a string. So converting a number to a boolean was easier then, had to encase it in parentheses before pulling the 5th element of the resulting string...

Seems that there was no mention of my answer requiring to be in the form of a function, so I've just stripped the fat arrow function declaration.

Answer 7

Piet, 30 codels

I'm sure that this can be improved, but I'm a bit of a Piet newbie.

Side note: I have titled it Icy Toll Gate to a Nether Portal. It's artistic, but not abstract, so it kind of follows the main design principle!

Answer 8

C++14, 30 bytes

As unnamed lambda (allowed in Python):

[](decltype('B')*c){*c='C'-2;} //'c'-2 for lowercase

//Usage:
#include <iostream>
main(){
  char c;
  [](decltype('B')*c){*c='C'-2;}(&c);
  std::cout << c << std::endl;
}

33 bytes

Function that assigns to its parameter:

int f(decltype('B')*c){*c='C'-2;}

//Usage:

#include <iostream>
main(){
 char c;
 f(&c);
 std::cout << c << std::endl;
}

Pretty hard to do it otherwise since no #include, return or auto because of U. Modifying parameters for return values seems ok Meta

Answer 9

SMBF, 4 bytes

<-.B

Try it Online!

Explanation:

<-    Wrap pointer around to the "B" and decrement it, giving "A"
  .   Print
   B  Data storage

Answer 10

JavaScript, 21

Capital A because there seems to be no other solution to find a capital A

_=>`${[].keys()}`[8]

`${[].keys}` => "[object Array Iterator]" 8th index is A

_=>`${keys}`[38]

Also works in browser for similar reasons.

Edited to add function

Answer 11

Powershell, 11 bytes

" $(!2)"[2]

Every non-0 integer evaluates to True when casted to [bool].
!2 implicitly converts 2 to [bool] and negates it, so it becomes False.
$() blocks inside a string allow expressions to be evaluated before being converted to string.
When accessing a string with an index the string is treated as a char-array.
Since we're not allowed to use 1 i had to use a space to shift the a in False one to the right. Another option would be a negative index: "$(!2)"[-4].

Answer 12

!@#$%^&*()_+, 3 bytes

`^@

Try it online! Outputs lowercase.

Shortest for A seems to be 5 bytes: >^^^@ or B_^_@.

Explanation

`^@
`     push the character "`"
 ^    increment (to `a`)
  @   output as character

Answer 13

Keg, 3 2 bytes

B;

This pushes the ASCII character B onto the stack, and then decrements the value by 1. The value will automatically be printed.

Answer 14

Lenguage, 62,544,587,333,324 bytes

Unary, 134,032,404,790,876 bytes

^{I couldn't resist ;)}

Programs consists of 62544587333324 and 134032404790876 times the character B (or any allowed character you choose to). (Actually pretty short for Lenguage/Unary..)

Port of @Dennis♦' Brainfuck answer.

Byte-counts generated by this program I wrote in 05AB1E.

Answer 15

International Phonetic Esoteric Language, 8 bytes

My original answer used the old instruction set and interpreter, which have since been completely rewritten. Still abusing Unicode, and somehow the same length heh.

"C"ʁ2zχo

Explanation:

"C"ʁ     (push "C", convert str to num 67) ( -- 67)
    2    (push 2) ( -- 67 2)
     z   (subtract) ( -- 65)
      χ  (convert num to str) ( -- "A")
       o (print) ( -- )

---

International Phonetic Esoteric Language, 8 bytes (WIP language) (OLD)

2<C>ʀdχo

The wonders of abusing Unicode as your instruction set.

No TIO interpreter yet, but is runnable by cloning the repository above, and calling python main.py "code here".

2<C>ʀdχo
2        ; push 2
 <C>     ; push "C"
    ʀ    ; pop, push ord("C")
     d   ; pop, push 67 - 2
      χ  ; pop, push chr(65)
       o ; pop, print string

Answer 16

x86-16 machine code, IBM PC DOS, 6 bytes

Binary (CP437):

░@@═)├

Unassembled listing:

B0 40       MOV  AL, '@'    ; One below ASCII 'A' 
40          INC  AX         ; increment char 
CD 29       INT  29H        ; write AL to console 
C3          RET             ; return to DOS

Answer 17

Python 3, 24 bytes

print(chr(88-23),end='')

Prints an uppercase A without a newline.

Python 2, 16 bytes (with newline)

print chr(88-23)

Answer 18

Excel, 15 bytes

=MID(2=3,2,3-2)

Show the second character in FALSE

VBA (immediate window), 14 12 bytes

Lower case (12): ?chr(33*3-2)
Upper case (14): ?chr(8*8--3-2) or ?chr(23*3-2-2)

Answer 19

Python 2, 17 bytes

print`help`[23-2]

Try it online!

Explanation

help in python gives help for things. When just help is typed, a message saying Type help() for interactive help, or help(object) for help about object. is printed, which has a as its 22nd letter, or 21 when zero-indexed.

Answer 20

Mathematica, 27 25 24 bytes

Writes 10 in base 24. Half the length is one function name :(

IntegerString[2(8-3),33]

Thanks to Xavier for pointing out that the base doesn't have to be 16 (as in my original hexadecimal solution), and thanks to c-- for saving another byte!

Answer 21

Piet + ascii-piet, 14 bytes (10×2=20 codels)

sSsSKNMTFVrFff

Try Piet online!

(Previous record: 30 codels / ascii-piet bytes)

In ascii-piet, a represents a dark blue cell, and u is a light magenta cell. (x and symbols and digits do not exist.) This program has only one dark color but four different light colors, so I had to rotate the hue so that the resulting ascii-piet representation contains neither a nor u.

The program itself is pretty simple:

4 dup dup * * 1 + outC

Answer 22

MATL, 5 Bytes

'b'qc

Try it online!

Answer 23

SQF, 30 15

Using the function-as-a-file format:

toString[88-23]

Call as: call FUNCTION

Finally a challenge where SQF can compete. Not win, but actually competing is nice.

Answer 24

Pyth - 3 bytes

Alternate longer answer.

.HT

Try it online here.

Answer 25

Jellyfish, 5 bytes

P;>'@

Try it online!

Answer 26

Befunge-98, 6 bytes

'Lb-,q

Very basic: 'Lb- pushes (76-11 aka 65), , prints, q quits because using @ is too boring.

Answer 27

Caker, 24 bytes

ωΩθΩθθθθθΩθΘ

_{Body must be at least 30 characters; you entered 29.}

Answer 28

Perl 6, 14 bytes

print 'B'.pred

pred is short for "predecessor"

Answer 29

3var, 14 11 8 bytes

iii       # set A to 3
   s      # square A to 9
    d     # decrease A to 8
     s    # square A to 64
      i   # increment A to 65
       P  # print A as ascii

Try it online

Saved 3 bytes thanks to Joffan.

Answer 30

Oracle SQL 11.2, 56 50 bytes

Shorter way to compute 65, thanks to the previous answers using it.

SELECT NVL(MIN('.'),CHR(88-23))FROM col WHERE 2=3;

Old version :

SELECT NVL(MIN('.'),CHR(3*3*8-2-2-3))FROM col WHERE 2=3;

Ugly, but I had to find a way around DUAL