Vintage Computing Christmas Challenge 2022 - Star Power(PC)
Author: oddline
Category: Christmas Challenge
System: PowerBook G4 (PowerBook6,8) BootROM
Language: Open Firmware Forth / FCode, 4.9.0f0 BootROM
Len source code: 196 bytes
Len exe file: 108 bytes
Instructions:
Sorry, I'm not aware of any readily available Open Firmware or FCode emulator!
If you have any new world Power Mac, you can run this on hardware.
I wouldn't bother trying to load the FCode, it's quite a hassle; just boot to
Open Firmware (boot holding down Cmd+Option+O+F), then at the prompt, type out
the contents of oneliner.fth.
If you just want to run the Forth source, though, I've included a version
adapted for gforth and other standards-compliant Forths in source_std.fth.
(Open Firmware Forth expects different syntax for string and integer literals.)
Just run e.g. `gforth source_std.fth`.
Description:
The star is run-length encoded as a series of bytes.
As the symmetry makes this encoding a palindrome, only half of it is typed out;
it's looped through twice, first forwards and then backwards, to make the star.
This version is optimised for FCode bytecode size; I have a different version
with a shorter one-liner (168 bytes) but much larger bytecode (162 bytes).
(Many integer literals are very short to type, but make large bytecode.)
Comments:
Thanks for a fun little challenge :)