Questions tagged [kolmogorov-complexity]
Kolmogorov complexity, informally, is the amount of code it takes to describe or produce a constant object, such as a string or image. When posting a challenge in this category, please make sure it adds something new to existing challenges.
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"Hello, World!"
So... uh... this is a bit embarrassing. But we don't have a plain "Hello, World!" challenge yet (despite having 35 variants tagged with hello-world, and counting). While this is not the most ...
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We're no strangers to code golf, you know the rules, and so do I
Write the shortest program that prints the entire lyrics of "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley.
Rules:
Must output the lyrics exactly as they appear in the above pastebin*. Here's the raw dump:...
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1, 2, Fizz, 4, Buzz
Introduction
In our recent effort to collect catalogues of shortest solutions for standard programming exercises, here is PPCG's first ever vanilla FizzBuzz challenge. If you wish to see other ...
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Appease Your Google Overlords: Draw the "G" Logo
Write a program or function that takes in a positive integer N, and outputs an N×N pixel image of Google's "G" logo according to this* construction:
For example, if N is 400, a 400×...
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A keyboard so real you can almost TASTE it
... Not that you would, would you? The task is simple, output the following text:
...
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Sing Happy Birthday to your favourite programming language
Your favourite programming language has just had a birthday. Be nice and sing it the Happy Birthday song.
Of course you should accomplish this by writing a program in that language.
The program takes ...
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Print a 10 by 10 grid of asterisks
Background
This is a standard textbook example to demonstrate for loops.
This is one of the first programs I learnt when I started learning programming ~10 years ago.
Task
You are to print this exact ...
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Loading... Forever
Your challenge is to make an infinite loading screen, that looks like this:
Or, to be more specific:
Take no input.
Output Loading..., with a trailing space, but ...
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It's my Birthday :D
Introduction
Last year was my birthday (really!) and sadly I had to organise my own party. Well, now you know, couldn't you at least make the cake?
Challenge
Given an integer ...
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Draw the national flag of Iceland
This year's UEFA Euro 2016 is over and besides a couple of negative headlines there has been a very positive surprise as well – the Iceland national football team. Let's draw their national flag.
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Proving that a Russian cryptographic standard is too structured
The aim of this challenge is to find an impossibly short
implementation of the following function p, in the langage of your
choosing. Here is C code implementing it ...
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Draw the national flag of France
There have been many other flag challenges posted but not one for the national flag of France. This week seems like an appropriate time.
Produce this flag in the fewest bytes possible:
The image must ...
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It was just a bug
Inspired by the bugged output in @Carcigenicate's Clojure answer for the Print this diamond challenge.
Print this exact text:
...
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In Honor of Adam West
Adam West passed away, and I'd like to honor his memory here on PPCG, though I doubt he knew of our existence. While there are many, many different things that this man is known for, none are more ...
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Print this diamond
This question has been spreading like a virus in my office. There are quite a variety of approaches:
Print the following:
...
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5 Favorite Letters
The challenge is actually extremely simple. Pick 5 distinct letters (you can just pick the 5 that allow you the shortest code if you like) and output them to the console. However, the twist is that ...
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Print a Tabula Recta!
The Tabula Recta (sometimes called a 'Vigenere Table'), was created by Johannes Trithemius, and has been used in several ciphers, including all variants of Bellaso's Vigenere cipher and the Trithemius ...
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"99 Bottles of Beer"
Write a program that outputs the lyrics to 99 Bottles of Beer, in as few bytes as possible.
Lyrics:
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Bake a slice of Pi
Write a program or function that prints or outputs this exact text (consisting of 142 characters):
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Draw the Ukrainian Flag
As you probably know, there is a war going on in Ukraine. I noticed that it seems nobody has posted a Ukrainian flag challenge yet, so I thought I'd do it myself in support of Ukraine.
The Challenge
...
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Fibonacci + Fizz Buzz = Fibo Nacci!
Fibonacci + FizzBuzz = Fibo Nacci!
Your challenge is to create a Fibo Nacci program!
A Fibo Nacci program outputs the first 100 Fibonacci numbers (starting from 1).
If the Fibonacci number is ...
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War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength
As George Orwell wrote in 1984:
War is peaceFreedom is slaveryIgnorance is strength
Write a program or function that takes in one of the six main words from the Orwell quote and outputs its ...
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Sing Baby Shark
"Baby Shark" is a children's song about a family of sharks. Having long been popular as a campfire song, it has been popularized since the mid-2000s by social media, online video and radio. - ...
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Recognise Stack Exchange Sites by Their Icon
After spending a while on Stack Exchange, I can recognise most sites in the Hot Network Questions by their little icon (which is also their favicon), but certainly not all of them. Let's write a ...
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Golf Dennis a thermometer
Dennis puts in a huge amount of effort for this community, including as moderator, language designer, and provider of TIO.
Unfortunately, his four-year-old daughter has caught a cold, so let us all ...
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Build me a brick wall!
Challenge
I need help building a brick wall! Throw together some code for me
using no input and produce the following output wall shown below:
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Error 404: Character Not Found
Scenario
One of your friends is struggling on a homework assignment. He needs a simple program which prints the first 404 natural numbers:
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Draw the ☣ (Biohazard Symbol)
Draw the Biohazard symbol in an arbitrary colour on a distinctly coloured background. The specific proportions were published in the June 27th 1974 issue of the Federal Register of the US Government.
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The alphabet in programming languages
Our task is to, for each letter of the (English) alphabet, write a program that prints the alphabet, in a language whose name starts with that letter.
Input: none
Output:
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Turtles All the Way Down
Write a program or function that takes in a positive integer and prints or returns a stack of that many ASCII-art turtles, where each turtle is larger than the one above it.
Specifically, if the ...
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Print X without X (cop's thread)
This is the cop's thread of a cops-and-robbers challenge. You can view the robber's thread here
A pretty common beginner style question is to print some string, but there's a catch! You need to do it ...
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Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Recently, I've seen Hare Krishna people with their mantra on the emblem and I've found it may be quite interesting to code golf.
The challenge
Write the Hare Krishna mantra, i.e.:
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Make an alphabet searchlight!
Inspired by a bug in a solution to this challenge, your challenge is to produce this exact text:
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Interpreting Fish (no, not that Fish)
Consider these five ASCII art sea creatures:
Standard fish: ><> or <><
Speedy fish: ...
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The Programming Language Quiz, Mark II - Cops
A repost of this challenge. Meta discussion. Sandbox post. Body of the question similar to the original
Robber's challenge
This cops and robbers is now (08/03/2018) closed to further competing cop ...
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This is my pillow
...will you help me immortalize it?
I've had this pillow a few years now, and apparently it's time to get rid of it. Can you please write a function or program, that I can bring with me and use to ...
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"As a child, I was told Spiders felt no emotion."
The challenge: output this exact ASCII art of a spiderweb in a window:
...
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Rock, Polyglot, Scissors
Write a program that is a polyglot in three languages that plays rock–paper–scissors.
The input for any version of the program is always one of the strings rock or ...
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Make the Mexican Wave
In as few bytes as possible, write a program or function that outputs the following:
...
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Automate Saving the World
You are Desmond Hume. For the last 3 years, you and your partner, Kelvin, have been slave to a computer that requires a very specific sequence to be entered into it every 108 minutes to save the world....
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Print/Output the L-phabet
Inspired by George Gibson's Print a Tabula Recta.
You are to print/output this exact text:
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Output the full name of titin
Titin is a protein found in muscle tissue. It is a pretty big protein, and its full chemical name is giant as well. Comprising 189819 characters, the full name of titin would take about 3.5 hours to ...
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Help Trump build the wall!
Trump needs the wall constructed and you are going to do it! To most efficiently build his wall I have created a simple, repeatable pattern for you to use:
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Just repeat yourself
Write a program that outputs
Do not repeat yourself!
Your program code must respect the following constraints :
its length must be an even number
each ...
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ASCII Train Golf
Consider these seven ASCII train cars.
Engine (E)
__
====== \/
| [] |=========
| )
================
O-O-O O-O-O \\
Passenger car (...
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List of primes under a million
This is my first code golf question, and a very simple one at that, so I apologise in advance if I may have broken any community guidelines.
The task is to print out, in ascending order, all of the ...
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Draw the € sign
The goal is to output or display an image with an € (euro) sign according to the following specs (ignoring the border of the sign).
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Euro_Construction.svg
...
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Write lines in detention
Introduction
Bad news guys - you got detention. Your English teacher doesn't understand this site and wants you to "stop doing math on your digital dohickeys, this is English class!"
She ...
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