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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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>

Answer 1

SmileBASIC, 10 bytes

?KEY(2)[2]

KEY accesses the function buttons used in the editor. They can be set to any string, but by default they are 1:FILES 2:LOAD" 3:SAVE" 4:LIST ERR\r 5:RUN

Answer 2

,,,, 6 bytes

'Co2-c

Explanation

'Co2-c

'C      push "C"                    ["C"]
  o     convert to ASCII ordinal    [67]
   2-   subtract 2                  [65]
     c  convert to ASCII character  ["A"]
        implicit output             []

Answer 3

K (oK), 8 bytes

Solution:

`c$88-23

Try it online!

Explanation:

Interpretted right-to-left:

   88-23 / 88 minus 23 is 65
`c$      / cast to character ("A")

Answer 4

Pyth, 3 2 bytes

-1 from Dave reminding me to actually read the docs

hG

Explanation:

hG      The first entry in G (the alphabet)

Try it online!

Answer 5

Python, 31 bytes

print(chr(-~(2**(8-2))),end='')

Explanation: 8-2 is 6, and 2**6 (2 to the power of 6) is 64. chr(65) is A, so I need to add 1 without using + (or 1). I then used -~ which adds 1, creating chr(65) which is A.

Answer 6

Ahead, 6 bytes

'C2-o@

'C      push 67 (C in unicode)
  2     push 2
   -    subtract
    o   print char
     @  end

Try it online!

Answer 7

Scratch, 38 bytes

when gf clicked
think(letter(2)of<[]<[

Try it online!

think is used instead of say because say has an a.

Answer 8

MathGolf, 3 2 bytes

-1 byte thanks to maxb

╩Z

Try it online!

Fetches the 90th word in the dictionary, which is a uppercase 'A'.

Answer 9

MathGolf, 2 bytes

♂¢

Try it online.

Explanation:

♂     # Push 10
 ¢    # Convert to hexadecimal (and output implicitly)

Answer 10

Brian & Chuck, 7 bytes

B?
!<-.

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code:

Brian:
B    constant B
?    switch to Chuck

Chuck:
<    go to B
-    decrement it
.    and print it

Answer 11

Brain-Flak, 28 bytes

(((((()()()()){}){}){}){}())

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code:

(((((()()()()){}){}){}){}()) push 65
                             implicitly print stack

Answer 12

Julia 1.0, 12 bytes

print('d'-3)

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Answer 13

W d, 2 bytes

∑Ƿ

Explanation

Pretty much boils down to this after decompression:

'A

Answer 14

Pip, 4 bytes

/O@z

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Explanation

   z  Lowercase alphabet
  @   First character
 O    Output without newline
/     Invert

That last (first?) instruction requires some more explanation:

By default, Pip prints the last expression in the program with a trailing newline. (This is why we couldn't do @z for 2 bytes, since the challenge states that newlines should be avoided if at all possible.) That's a problem because O@z, in addition to outputting a without a newline, is also an expression that evaluates to a. So O@z by itself would print aa plus a newline.

There are two ways to get rid of the extra output: First, we could output inside an if statement (5 bytes: IzO@z or other similar programs). Second, we could make the final expression in the program evaluate to nil. Nil produces no output when printed, not even the trailing newline. The usual way to suppress auto-printing is to end the program with u, a variable preset to nil. Unfortunately, u is banned. We could use the nil expression (), which would put us back at 5 bytes: O@z().

Enter the unary division operator /, which inverts its operand. In this case, if we invert O@z, the operand is the string a. Non-numeric strings evaluate to 0 in numeric contexts, which means we're dividing by 0. This gives nil, which suppresses the newline exactly as desired.

Answer 15

Wren, 41 bytes

System.write(String.fromCodePoint(88-23))

Try it online!

Answer 16

Wenyan, 39 33 bytes (WIP language)

加陰以『』夫其之二書之

Update: Wenyan now supports 『』 in place of 「「」」 for quoting strings. (starting from v0.1.2)

Literally console.log((false+"")[2-1]) but not using any of +, a and 1

Explanation

　　　　　　　　　書之          // console.log(               )
　　　　　夫其之　　　          //             (        )[ -1]
　陰　　　　　　　　　          //              false
加　以　　　　　　　　          //                   +
　　　『』　　　　　　          //                    ""
　　　　　　　　二　　          //                        2

Note: Indexing in Wenyan is 1-based.

Answer 17

Ruby, 16 bytes

$><<[*??..?B][2]

Get's the third element in the range from '?' to 'B', which is 'A'!

Explanation

$><<[*??..?B][2]

    [*      ]     create an array containing the elements from
        ..        the inclusive range from
      ??          literal '?' character to
          ?B      literal 'B' character
                  this array is now ['?', '@', 'A', 'B']
             [2]  get the 3rd element of this array ('A')
  <<              append/write that to
$>                standard output

Try it online!

Answer 18

Google Sheets/Excel (15 bytes)

Assuming your localization is in English:

=MID(2=3,2,2/2)

Note: this will not work on LibreOffice because it will change FALSE to 0 instead of "FALSE".

Answer 19

MAWP, 5 bytes

88WM;

Creates ASCII code for \$8*8+1(existing)=65\$ and outputs it.

Try it!

Answer 20

Nim, 12 bytes

echo'B'.pred

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Answer 21

Knight, 10 9 bytes

O G F T T

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# print...
OUTPUT(
   # extract a substring
   # Specifically, the "a" from "false"
   GET(
     FALSE # coerces to "false"
     TRUE # 1
     TRUE # 1
   )
)

• 1 byte to a massive dum moment, thanks MarcMush

Answer 22

PICO-8, 16 bytes

?chr(ord("c")-2)

Moves back from C to get to A.

Answer 23

HTML5, 99 48 47 bytes

<p id=e><script>e.innerHTML=` ${!2}`[2]</script

Apparently you don't need the > after </script to parse correctly

(old versions)

<p id=e><script>e.innerHTML=` ${!2}`[2]</script>

<p id=e><script>this[`doc${[!!2].join``[2]}ment`].getElementById`e`.innerHTML=` ${!2}`[2]</script>

Try it below:

<p id=e><script>e.innerHTML=` ${!2}`[2]</script

Deobfuscated (new version):

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head></head>
<body></body>
  <p id="paragraphID"></p>
  <script>
    // in JavaScript, when paired with HTML, any element with an id implicitly has the element with the id stored as a global variable, so you don't need to call document.getElementById or document.querySelector
    paragraphID.innerHTML = ' false'[2]; // JS is 0 indexed, so ' false'[2] is 'a' (there's a space before 'false')
  </script>
<html> 

Deobfuscated (old version):

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head></head>
<body></body>
  <p id="paragraphID"></p>
  <script>
    document.getElementById("paragraphID").innerHTML = ' false'[2]; // JS is 0 indexed, so ' false'[2] is 'a' (there's a space before 'false')
  </script>
<html> 

[!!2].join``[2]

is [true].join("") is true.toString() is "true", and the 2nd index of "true" is u

` ${!2}`[2]

This is " false" index 2, which with the space at the beginning is a (inspired by slebetman)

Answer 24

Kustom, 33 bytes

$tc(reg,tc(type,أ),".....$","")$

explained:

$tc(reg,      regex replace
  tc(type,أ),  text type of some Arabic character (="ARABIC")
  ".....$",   replace 5 characters at the end...
  ""          ... with the empty string
)$

Answer 25

J, ^{14 10 8} 6 bytes

hfd-!3

Attempt This Online!

-2 thanks to south, with another 4 on a variation of south's idea

-2 thanks to Bubbler and south, taking that idea one step further

We take the hex representation of -6.

Answer 26

Aheui (esotope), 18 bytes

밣따밯타맣희

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This answer "cheats" by choosing a language where the entirety of ASCII (other than newline) is meaningless, but constructing a number is hard (the only constants you can push directly are 0 and 2-9, and -1 on EOF). At least 65 is simpler to construct than 97.

A straightforward program that prints charcode 65 would be 7 chars (21 bytes): 밣발다발따맣희, or in pseudo-assembly:

push 8; push 5; add; push 5; mul // pushes 65
putchar; halt

But the program at the top uses a specific behavior of arithmetic operators that, if there are not enough operands, the next direction is reversed. So 밣따 (push 8; mul) at start runs like this:

push 8 // [8]
mul // fails; go back to `push 8`
push 8 // [8, 8]
mul // [64], proceeds to the next command on its right

Then the remaining instructions are:

밯    getchar // push -1 instead because EOF
타    sub     // adds 1 to 64 to get 65
맣희  putchar; halt

Answer 27

(,), 56 Chars or \$56\times \log_{256}(3)\approx\$ 11.09 Bytes

((),()()()()()()()()()()()()())(,,,(())(())(())(())(()))

Answer 28

Google Sheets, 25 bytes

=LEFT(SORT(RITZCODERZ()))

Answer 29

YASEPL, 13 12 bytes

=m$8^=d-:m›

:3

Answer 30

Kotlin, 7 bytes

{'C'-2}

Try it!