Heyho, I Now Red Alot Of Your Sources And I Started To Understand Your Interpretation Of ~ATH. You Do

WOAAAAHHHH I posted! (significant progress on functions)

Hey, I haven't posted in a while because I have been doing other stuff. Meanwhile some people followed me. Thank you.

OK, so news: I got calling functions working. it works and stuff.

huh, apparently tumblr changed the interface since I last posted? I think I preferred the previous version? w/e.

But what I haven't added yet is the syntax to define and create a new function. Right now I just have some functions hard-coded in as elements of a dictionary. If you want to try it out just modify the funCodes dictionary. (yes, I am terrible at naming variables.)

Yeah so, I an not totally sure what I am going to have for the syntax for defining a function, but the syntax for calling a function is

FUNCTION_NAME [IN1,IN2]OUT;

(which takes the object consisting of IN1 and IN2 and puts it through the function, where it would be stored as the variable ARGS, and when it finishes the last thing .DIE() was called with is what gets put into OUT)

and then theres

FUNCTION_NAME IN[OUT1,OUT2];

which kinda does the opposite.

takes in IN, and splits the out into OUT1 and OUT2

(this version (the FUNCTION IN[OUT,OUT]; one, as opposed to the FUNCTION[IN,IN]OUT; one) isn't actually implemented yet, but mostly I will just have to copy paste it from the other one and change a few numbers, but I have to homework now so I'll do that later.)

to clarify, the same functions can be used either way. You can say LIME [LIME,LIME]LIME; or you can say LIME LIME[LIME,LIME]; and they would both call the function LIME, but they would do slightly different things.

hooray for stuff.

anyway I am going to go uh, push that new version.

How should the syntax for defining a function be? Should it just be each file can be imported as a function?

Welcome.

If its not obvious, this blog will teach techniques in a version of ~ATH Specifically, drocta ~ATH. And yes, I'm serious. I believe that I probably am the author of the longest ( possibly up to third longest) ~ATH program. Specifically, bubble sort. Further, I believe I am the author of the first ~ATH interpreter. (I am the drocta of drocta ~ATH) Link here: http://www.mspaforums.com/showthread.php?50314-ATH-interpreter This blog is intended to serve as a tutorial on writing things in drocta ~ATH. First I will go over the syntax. Then how to make conditional like things. Then how to make finite loops. Then perhaps storing "numbers". Then copying "numbers" Then comparing "numbers" Then lists In such a way I intend to work our way up to you understanding how to write bubble sort in drocta ~ATH. After that, we might even implement brainf*** in it. Or a universal Turing machine. Of course, when I say "numbers", the quotes are there for a reason. Numbers are not built into drocta ~ATH. One has to build them. Now how do I tag things...? Ah, that's how. In case it wasn't clear, the interpreter for drocta ~ATH does not attempt the impossible. It cannot trigger the apocalypse. It's just a python script that interprets ~ATH scripts. Don't worry if you don't already know how to program. I intend to make the posts fairly accessible.

User defined functions can be used now! Also PRINT2 added!

PRINT2 prints a string object as a string. If you give it something that is not a string object it will probably crash, or output the empty string.

Now, to import user defined functions use 

importf filename as FUNCTIONNAME;

Why didn't I put this up earlier?

because I have other projects and because sometimes I am busy/lazy.

OK!

So to make a function to import, you pretty much make a ~ATH file like normal, except the object passed into the function is put into the variable ARGS, and when you want to pass the output object of the function out, you have it as an argument to the DIE method.

It can either be when saying THIS.DIE(RETURNOBJ); or ANYOTHERVARIABLE.DIE(RETURNOBJ);

The object your killing doesn't have to be the one tied to the life of the function or anything.

Oh I should clarify, the THIS variable/object will refer to the current function, not the file that called it.

It CAN be returned, and will be dead when you exit the function.

PROGRESS!

FUNCTIONS WORK.

LESS SPAGHETTI CODE.

although this starts to make me wonder if maybe this strays too far from what ~ATH is like in comic, 

but w/e.

Learn ~ATH turned 1 today!

yaaaay!

So I think that my explanations of things hasn't been very clear so far, and while I can't promise that they will improve, I do intend to teach programming in person at my school, which might help me to know how to make this tutorial better. Maybe, maybe not. 

May things go well!

Happy 10/25

Today is the 10 year anniversary of the destruction of the universe frog. Such an occasion is traditionally celebrated by destroying the universe.

Is drocta ~ATH case- and whitespace-sensitive? For instance, would "BIFURCATE 2NULL[JUNK,BLAH];" do the same thing as "bifurcate 2NULL [JUNK, BLAH];"? Also, is there a difference between calling .DIE() on an object and setting it to NULL? Your tutorials seem to be written as if there were a difference. And finally, I'm still unsure about what "BIFURCATE [CMP0,ZEROCHAR]D;" and "D.DIE();" are supposed to do in regards to interpreting the user-inputted character.

drocta ~ATH is case sensitive in most cases, and white space sensitive in some cases. line breaks/new lines are not neccessary for example.

if I said "bifurcate 2NUL[JUNK,BLAH]; that would by a typo on my part. It should be BIFURCATE.

if people want I could make it not case sensitive, but currently it is.

there is a VERY IMPORTANT (if subtle) difference between setting a variable to null and calling .DIE on an object.

in drocta ~ATH, there are variables and objects. Every variable "points to" or "references" an object. The object that a variable points to does not necessarily stay the same. if you have some variable "C", and then you say BIFURCATE SOMETHING[C,JUNK];

instead of pointing to what it was pointing to before, it points to the left half of whatever SOMETHING is pointing to.

This doesn't make the object no longer exist however. It might be that no variables point to it anymore, but it still is stored in memory.

More than one variable can point to a given object.

If variable A and B both initially point to the same object, and then you change A so that it points to a different object, B will still point to the object that they were pointing to at first.

so if A and B both point to some object (which is initially alive), and then A is made to point to the object initially pointed to by NULL (which is initially dead), then A will point to an object that is dead, but B will still point to an object that is alive.

In contrast, if D and F are pointing to the same object, which is initially alive, and one says "D.DIE();", the object that D points to will die (become dead). D and F still point to the same object, but this object is now dead. So both D and F point to a dead object.

about the user input part:

BIFURCATE [CMP0,ZEROCHAR]D;D.DIE();

determines some object, temporarily pointed to by D, which has the object pointed to by CMP0 as its left half, and the object pointed to by ZEROCHAR as its right half. It then kills this object.

the purpose of this, is so that if one has some character object (from the input statement), and wants to know if it is '0', then one can determine the object that has the object pointed to by CMP0 as the left half, and the object that you want to test as the right half. If the object you are testing IS '0', then the object that you get should be the same one that you killed, so it should be dead. If it is not '0' but rather, say, 'z' or just some object that doesn't have a corresponding character, it will result in some other object, which has not been killed, so it is still alive.

I hope I cleared up some of your questions.

I've realized that my tutorials haven't been tutorial-y enough

I've realized that recently, my tutorial posts have been too much code and not enough explanation. That was a mistake on my part, so I am going to go back now and give better explanations.

Also, I have started to make a table of contents page.

I figured that if someone wanted to read the tutorial after a significant part of it were finished, that they might have trouble, because it would kind of be in reverse order.

So TABLE OF CONTENTS AHOY!

Yeah.

So uh, any suggested changes to the format of the TOC page?

Why cant I mark this as a post that can be answered? I can let people photo reply, but once it goes in drafts I can't let people answer this question? Or is it too long?

What is with this interface?

I couldn't help but notice that out of some of the best things you could do, no link to the download in the sidebar? You may want to do that...

uh, yes. that would be good to do.

I put a link in the about section, but I don't actually know how to put links in the sidebar outside of that.

do you think you could explain that for me?(I am not particularly experienced with tumblr)

EDIT:Nevermind, my friend from school told me where the feature is.

I am so bad at updating. (and a side note)

I am still intending to update this.

but I am not good at time management.

I have like 2 hours of free time after school, (because of certain inefficiencies on my part) so that's my stupid excuse.

I am working on writing some responses to some requests for clarification, and then I will do the second part of the converter TO binary.

the print command can have the end of a loop in.

The contents of the print command can be executed.

so if you say:

import blah A; import bleh B; ~ATH(A){ ~ATH(B){ print heh } ~ATH(NULL){ print giant frogs alert; B.DIE(); } }  

it should print

"heh } ~ATH(NULL){ print giant frogs alert giant frogs alert"

this of course, is not particularly useful as far as I can tell, except possibly for quines, and possibly obfuscation. but really, is it possibly to write anything in ~ATH that isn't obfuscated?

speaking of not obfuscated, I have started working on adding a feature for user defined functions. I have it pretty much worked out how it will work, but I am not sure how I want to make the user DEFINE the functions. so I haven't been doing NOTHING with regards to this.

Bug fixed

Fixed the bug. The problem was that it was seeing

\n}\nD.DIE();

 and it was checking if the text up to the next semicolon ended with .DIE() and if it did, using the stuff before the . as the variable name.  When it should have been seeing the } and jumping back.

Also there may have been a problem with the {} matching. If so, that was fixed too. It was not the last part to be fixed.

BUT ANYWAY: The bug is fixed now.

runs in python 2.7

If you have a different version of python, and it is incompatible, please tell me. If a sufficient number of people want it in a different python version I might make a version of it for multiple python versions.