78

78 is an esoteric language based on the numbers 7 and 8. It's really confusing and complicated to use, but supports quite a few features.

For example, the language has:

(Up to) 2 variables
Float support
Simple if conditions
Outputting both numbers and characters
Loops

Why?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Interpreters

Currently the only interpreter I know of is mine, which you can see in this repo as interpreter.js! It only has the very basic features of 78 and nothing else. To run it, you have to do:

node interpreter.js code.78

Syntax

The syntax of the language is really simple. Each character in a program is an instruction, which must be one of the pre-defined instructions. Each instruction in the program is ran in order over and over again until the program is terminated.

Instructions

a - 7 is added to the current value
b - 8 is subtracted from the current value
g - 10^-x ie added to the current value, the amount of the next g instructions determines the x
o - output the current value multiplied by 2
s - swaps the current variable and the extra variable's values
! - starts and ends a loop. a loop is terminated once the resulting main value at the end of the loop is equal to 0
h - the next instruction is ignored if the current value is over 0
j - the next instruction is ignored if the current value is 0
k - if the next instruction is h or j, it reverses the statement of the instruction (ex. kha would only add 7 if the current value is below 0), else negtates the value
f - terminates the program if the next instruction is u
u - ignored if the next instruction isnt c
c - ignored if the next instruction isnt k
y - outputs the current value's character based on the ascii code
r - sets the current value to 8 (whitespace) - ignored

Examples

14

This program will output the number 14 and then exit:

a o fuck

This is because first the main value is added 7 to with a, making it 7, then that value is multiplied by two and outputted by o, and then the program is terminated with fuck.

Loops

This program will output numbers from 14 to 0:

a !ba g g g g g o! fuck

Note: because of float impercision, this doesn't actually happen on the JS interpreter included in the repo.

Simpler loops

This program will output even numbers from 14 to 0:

a !ba o! fuck

Extra variable

This program would output even numbers from 14 to 0 and put spaces inbetween the numbers:

aaaaabababa s a !ba o s y s! fuck

What this does is it first sets the main value to the unicode code of a space character, then swaps the extra and main values to make it stored in memory, but not erased: aaaaabababa s. And then, when it needs to use the value, it swaps to the extra value, prints it out, then swaps back to the main value: s y s.

Unicode table

This program will output each character in the unicode table:

a !aaaaaaabbbbb y!

Since there is no termination condition, the program will run forever.*

*Until the interpreter reaches the maximum call stack size.

If conditions

This program will never terminate, even though there is a fuck inside it:

a hfuck

This happens because h doesn't run the next instruction unless the value is under or equal to 0, and the value just happens to be 7, due to the first a instruction in the program. Therefore the h ignores the fuck instruction and the program endlessly loops.

~~also the program says "ah fuck" for some reason but that's a different mystery to solve~~

There are a few more examples in the examples/ folder of the repo which you can check out. They usually have a comment after the fuck instruction saying what it does.

oatmealine / 78

78