The Ellipsis language is designed to be the absolute simplest programming language in existence. It uses just one character!
Ellipsis is a little language that compiles into Brainf&*%. To write an Ellipsis program, enter n ellipses into your source file. Then, convert n into its big-endian octal representation… call this oct. Convert each digit of oct into new characters based on the table to the right.
Now, just run the result through a standard Brainf&*% interpreter!
A sample program (standard file extension is "..") that beeps is simply 4,793,492 ellipsis characters!
A reference implementation is available in ruby:
oct digit |
output |
| 0 | > |
| 1 | < |
| 2 | + |
| 3 | - |
| 4 | . |
| 5 | , |
| 6 | [ |
| 7 | ] |
(File.size(ARGV[0])/3).to_s(8).chars.map{|x| print %w(> < + - . , [ ])[x.to_i]}
Since Ellipsis only uses a single character, you don't have to worry about syntax errors, operator precedence, or deadlocks! It's just a a sea of ellipses…
The Ellipsis Programming language officially supports two modes. First, if you system supports the ellipsis glyph (Unicode character U+2026), you're ready to go! If your system does not support the glyph, Ellipsis also supports programs written with three periods in place of the official glyph. (Programs are not allowed to mix these characters)
By its very nature, Ellipsis is not only compressible, it's exponentially compressible. The longer the program, the more compressible it is!