A curses-based JAPH

[brian_d_foy]

Since eyepopslikeamosquito laid out a breif history of the JAPH, I figured I might as well add one of the few that I ever wrote. I'm not much into obfus or code in sigs or what not, but I did have an idea for a JAPH after watching The Matrix a couple times, and up until then I hadn't seen anyone use the entire screen and rand() to make the right string pop up.

I did have a obfuscated version of this somewhere, but I can't find it. Just remove most of the whitespace and shorten all the variable names.

Update: fixed eyepopslikeamosquito (twice) :(

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

use Curses;

my @LETTERS = ( 'A' .. 'Z', 'a' .. 'z', ',', ' ' );
$SIG{TERM} = sub { exit };

my $STRING = 'Just Another Perl Hacker,';
my $LENGTH = length $STRING;

initscr;

my $ROW    = ( LINES() % 2 ? LINES() - 1 : LINES() ) / 2;
my $COLUMN = ( COLS() % 2 ? COLS() - 1 : COLS() ) / 2 - 
    ( $LENGTH % 2 ? $LENGTH - 1 : $LENGTH ) / 2;
my $END_COL = $COLUMN + $LENGTH - 1;

my @array;
my $count = 0;

my $x = random( LINES );
my $y = random( COLS );
my $letter = sub { $LETTERS[ int( rand( @LETTERS ) ) ] };

while( 1 )
    {
    my $x      = &$x;
    my $y      = &$y;
    my $letter = &$letter;
    
    next if( $x == $ROW and $array[$y] );
    
    if( $x == $ROW and $y >= $COLUMN and $y <= $END_COL
        and substr( $STRING, $y - $COLUMN, 1 ) eq $letter )
        {
        $array[$y]++;
        $count++;
        }
        
    put_letter( $letter, $x, $y );
    
    if( $count == $LENGTH ) { @LETTERS = ' '; }
    
    }
    
sub random
    {
    my $range = shift;
    
    sub {  int ( rand ( $range ) ) }
    }
    
sub put_letter
    {
    my ($letter, $x, $y) = @_;
    
    addch( $x, $y, $letter );
    
    refresh;
    }

[chanio]

Very nice + impressive!

It reminds me one of the first naughty viruses: cascades.

There should be an ESC exit key, 'though.

Thanks for this good example! (and 4 some extra adrenaline!)

[eyepopslikeamosquito]

Since eyespoplikeamosquito laid out a brief history of the JAPH ...

Thanks for the acknowledgement ... despite the spelling variation. ;-) So now I know the merlyn, the larry and the brian have all written a JAPH. What about TheDamian?

[TheDamian]

I've never written one. I suppose if I did, my first attempt might look something like:

#?<')I;G0G2G5S="!A;F]T:&5R(%!E<FP@:&%C:V5R)P```
eval<DATA>;sub'_{$_=unpack+u=>$_=>until/u(?{eval})/}
   __DATA__
seek+DATA=>$%,%$;_%;for<DATA>=~'.(.*.).'

[eyepopslikeamosquito]

Thanks for that. Very evil, er, nice. /me scribbles some new obfu tricks.

If I may make a criticism of this first attempt from a JAPH beginner, it is the title. AFAICT, by Perl Monks convention, it should read something like "My First JAPH!!!" and contain a plea to please be kind. ;-)

Oh, and it's not canonical. To canonicalize, replace the first line with:

#@<')I;G0G2G5S="!A;F]T:&5R(%!E<FP@:&%C:V5R+"<``

As a bit of a spoiler, re-formatting the code like this:

#@<')I;G0G2G5S="!A;F]T:&5R(%!E<FP@:&%C:V5R+"<``
eval<DATA>;
sub X { $_ = unpack('u', $_) until /u(?{eval})/ }
__DATA__
seek(DATA, 0, 0); X() for <DATA> =~ /.(.*.)./;

makes it a bit easier to understand.

[mkirank]

Good one :-) ... How long did you take to write this program (Just curious to know)..

[brian_d_foy]

I can't recall, really, since it was so long ago.

I'm guessing it was 15 minutes or so, then minor changes such as randomizing the location on the screen. It was definitely a lunch time distraction, and I pretty much knew what I wanted to do when I started.

[sgifford]

IMHO, a JAPH should be short enough to fit in an email sig. Here's my attempt to compress and obfuscate your code:

use Curses;use integer;@S=split(//,'Just Another Perl Hacker,');
initscr;$C=(COLS()-@S)/2;%j=map{(LINES()/2)."/$_"=>1}($C..$C+@S-1);
$x=mr(0..LINES()-1);$y=mr(0..COLS()-1);$l=mr(32..126);
while(my($x,$y,$l)=(&$x,&$y,(keys%r==@S)?' ':chr(&$l))){
if($j{"$x/$y"}){next if($r{$y});$r{$y}++ if($S[$y-$C] eq $l)}
addch($x,$y,$l);refresh;}sub mr{my@a=@_;sub{$a[rand @a]}}

I couldn't get it down to 4 lines, but who's picky about USENET .sig files anymore anyways? :)

Update: Turns out I'm still picky about USENET .sig files. This can be formatted into 4 80-column lines; it's formatted as 5 70-column lines here because otherwise PM wraps it into unreadability.

use Curses;@S=split(//,'Just Another Perl Hacker,');initscr;$C=int((
&COLS-@S)/2);%j=map{int(&LINES/2)."/$_"=>1}($C..$C+@S-1);($X,$Y,$L)=
map{my$n=$_;sub{int rand $n}}(&LINES,&COLS,95);while(($x,$y,$l)=(&$X,
&$Y,chr(32+(keys%r==@S?0:&$L)))){if($j{"$x/$y"}){next if($r{$y});
$r{$y}++if($S[$y-$C] eq $l)}addch($x,$y,$l);refresh}

[drewbie]

Wicked cool! I especially love how the phrase slowly comes into being in the center, and then everything fades away after it's done. Kinda reminds me of the Matrix effect. :-)