My obfuscation debute

[Maqs]

This is an ugly code, inspired by the old music hit, assuming you have perl in your $PATH :)

$_=pack"H14","7065726c202d76";$s=(`$_`)[3]
;@c=split//,$s;$l=chr(77);@o=join'',$l,@c[
22..26],@c[7,22],chr(100),@c[9,22,9,29,5,8
,8,29],substr($_,1,1),@c[9,29,22],lc$l,lc(
chr((ord$c[0])-1));if($s){print"@o\n"}

[turnstep]

Well, you need to assume a lot more than that. Remember that everyone's perl is a little different, and "perl -v" does NOT necessarily have "Copyright 1987-1999, Larry Wall" as the third line of the output. Specifically, I tried this on three platforms, and all gave different outputs, until I found one that did output the desired string (yes, I'll reveal it here, as it may not work on many platforms): "Marry had a littl lamb." Don't know if your machine's third line is a little different, and thus the extra 'r' and the missing 'e'.

A Solaris box output this:

Match
padrarieeram

which made me wonder what obscure song *that* referred to! :)

Perhaps have a way to search for the correct line? The concept is a good idea...

[mcwee]

THis came out fine on the box I login on (UNIX System V Release 4.0)-- accepting that the protagonist of the song chooses a slightly eccentric spelling of her name. At any rate, this is very, very cool. Downright graceful, even.

The Autonomic Pilot