(vintage) C - 88 = *No need for all these silly dedicated golfing languages. Better go back to the good old days, before the quiche eaters and their "program = algorithm+data" nonsense ruined all the fun.* The code is a C function, stored as a string. It returns the binary value as an integer. Run it in DosBox with Borland Turbo C 2.0. There are no control characters in the string, so a copy-paste should work. Compile with **`tiny`** memory model or else... typedef int (* pfun)(); main () { pfun passwd = (pfun) "¬< sûŠDþ,#ÃEq{1Kt:=qQ+ƒ.?&m):|YH)†P$Pzs/7Tk,2o0&(CƒzIzB-E+\l^Dk‚sw.'..Hjp~T8WSN.pWc&,8Idhwƒq*jsq&„"; printf ("password %d\n", passwd()); } If you disassemble the start of the string, you'll see something like: scan: lodsb cmp al,32 jae scan mov al,[si-2] sub al, 35 ret since `si` is used as function address, it points directly to the code, followed by the passwords. All values are shifted by 35 to avoid escaping control characters and double quotes. The code is 11 bytes long, so it will work up to 12 characters. Unfortunately, the 11th value (34) is too low to produce a valid password with an increased shift value (`ret` opcode is 195, so you would need a shift of 161, and the maximal shift to avoid a rollover is 255-99=156). 11 characters will produce a wrong value, and your virtual PC will likely crash with 10 characters or less.