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Default Rules: Code Golf I/O

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What input/output methods do you think should be allowed/disallowed while code golfing on this site? What guidelines for input/output methods do you think should be in place?

One method per answer, please. Vote up/down according to if you believe the given method should be allowed.

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19 answers

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A program may use IOs for input and output.

A input can be read via IO, which can be a port with (multiple) IOs each IO reads a symbol (a bit or more when you have a ADC). Or it can come from frames, such as UART frames, I2C, SPI, Ethernet, .... (any bus you like).

And Output can be done the same but reversed.

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+11
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Functions may take input via arguments and output via return value

Functions may also use STDIN/STDOUT as they wish.

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Clarification needed (1 comment)
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Functions may use arguments or lists of arguments interchangeably

For example, if a challenge requires defining f(x, y, z), f(a) is also acceptable where a[0] = x, a[1] = y, a[2] = z.

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You may output delimiter-separated values instead of a list

For example, the output [1,2,3] could be represented as 1 2 3 or 1|2|3.

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Restriction (1 comment)
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Programs may take input from prompts from the GUI

For Mathematica, JS, Matlab, et. al. this is the closest thing they have to STDIN.

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Functions may take multiple arguments with currying

For some languages like Haskell this is almost a necessity, as only one-argument functions exist and multi-argument functions are implemented with currying. (You might take a list or tuple of the values but this isn't the natural way to do multi-arg functions in Haskell.)

The same thing should be allowed for languages which do have proper multi-argument functions. In JavaScript, one might want to use f=a=>b=>... and call f(a)(b) instead of using f=(a,b)=>... and calling f(a, b).

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I'm not sure this needs to be said; it's a pretty obvious rule, but it might be good to have it writt... (2 comments)
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Regexes may output via the list of matched strings (capture group 0)

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In languages without STDIN (eg ///) programs may input through insertion into the source code

Also applies to cellular automata, in which the most natural way of taking input is specifying some space for a user-created structure.

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You may modify the input in-place

If a function takes an input a, it is acceptable that a contains the intended output after executing instead of other forms of output. Note that this means a must be mutable to begin with and the function must actually mutate a.

Example

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Same discussion in another Meta post (1 comment)
Clarification (2 comments)
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Turing machines supporting multiple halt states may output with the state they halt on

Similar to the exit code submission.

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Applying this to other languages (1 comment)
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Numerical I/O may be given as a character code

Input 64 may be given as @ instead. This mostly exists for languages like Brainfuck that only take input through character codes.

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Programs may output via exit code

Exit codes are to programs what return values are to functions, so it makes sense that exit codes would be allowed.

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Disagree (2 comments)
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Unless explicitly asking for exactly two values, you may use any truthy/falsey values in decision problems

For instance, considering the hypothetical challenge "Determine if a number is non-divisible by 3", n=>n%3 would be a valid solution, as it outputs a truthy (non-zero) value when it is non-divisible and a falsey (zero) value when it is.

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Command-line arguments may be used as input instead of stdin

Languages/systems that support reading input from command-line arguments may use those as input instead of reading from stdin.

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Technically, command line arguments go to stdin in most languages, don't they (2 comments)
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Turing machines may use the contents of their tape pre-execution as their input

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Too vague (3 comments)
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Image output may be a pixel shader

A pixel shader inputs x,y coordinates of a pixel and prints the color of a pixel (scalar for grayscale, tuple for full color, bool for binary...). Relevant for Shadertoy/GLSL answers and graphical output challenges.

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Programs/functions may use the presence/absence of output as a bool

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Functions may return bools via the presence/absence of an error

Crashing to mean false and not crashing to return true. Another branch of the exit code answer.

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A program may output a boolean value by using different amount of time or instructions till it returns.

If a program needs to determine a boolean value, it may return in less than N second (or instructions) when the value is false but take longer than N + ϵ second (or instructions) when the value is true or vice versa.

The difference (ϵ) has to be large enough to be detectable without much effort. I would suggest there is a factor of at least 16 between true and false (i.e. $ϵ > 15 \cdot N$) . A infinite ϵ should be allowed (if it doesn't return after N second, kill it and consider the result as true). The poster has to give an estimate of N.

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Non-observable behaviour (7 comments)
Non-trivial change (3 comments)

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