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Challenges Can you give me half?

dc, 3 unique bytes, 138 bytes This challenge is pretty easy if you aim for just 4 unique bytes. For example, you could push the stack depth repeatedly to get ascending integers, set the precision ...

posted 2y ago by orthoplex‭

Answer
#1: Initial revision by user avatar orthoplex‭ · 2022-02-09T14:28:50Z (about 2 years ago)
# dc, 3 unique bytes, 138 bytes

This challenge is pretty easy if you aim for just 4 unique bytes. For example, you could push the stack depth repeatedly to get ascending integers, set the precision to something positive, divide and then print.
```dc
zzzzk/p
```
And surely it can't go any lower, right? After all, we have to increase the precision (`k`), print (`p`, `n`, `f`), do a floating-point operation (`v`, `^`, `/`, `.`), and still get a number from somewhere...

Luckily though, there is actually a narrow path forward thanks to `a` and `x`. `a` pops a number off the stack, casts it to a `long`, and pushes its LSB back as a single-character string. Using `x` we can then execute that string as a command. This leaves us to choose a third command which should give us some helpful numbers that we can feed into `a`. The only options that can give us a range of numbers are `z` as well as the hex digits `A` through `F`. I haven't found a way to tame `z`, since it buries every intermediate result you get, so let's just see what useful characters we can get if we choose one of the hex digits.

| Program | Resulting character |
|---|---|
| `AAa` | `n` |
| `AAAAa` | `f` |
| `AAAAAAa` | `F` |
| `CCCa` | `4` |
| `DDDDa` | `k` |
| `FFFFFFa` | `i` |

At first, this might not look too promising, but if we choose `F` as our third command, we can use the `i` to change the input base to 15 and basically get a reroll on our commands. 🤞

| Program | Resulting character |
|---|---|---|
| `FxFFFFFFaxFFFFFa` | `/` |
| `FxFFFFFFaxFFFFFFFa` | `?` |

The `?` doesn't help us, since we don't get any input, the `/` however is game-changing. By carefully placing the right constants on the stack before and after the base change we can later use `/` to efficiently calculate the ASCII value of any command. We use this to first set the precision to 15 and then sum, divide and print three pre-placed `F`s (as in `F k F F F + / n`) to do the actual calculation.

Finally, here is an annotated version of the complete program:

```dc
F F F         # three 15s for calculating 0.5
FFFFFFFFFFFFF # "+" numerator
FFFFFF        # "+" denominator 1
F             # argument for k
FFFFFFFFFFF   # "k" numerator
FFFFF         # "k" denominator 1
F             # argument for i
FFFFFFax      # execute "i" to switch base
FFFFFax       # "k" division 1
F             # "k" denominator 2
FFFFFax       # "k" division 2
ax            # execute "k" to set precedence
FFFFFax       # "+" division 1
F             # "+" denominator 2
FFFFFax       # "+" division 2
ax            # execute "+" to add two 15s
FFFFFax       # divide 15 by 30
FFFFFFFFFFFF  # "n" numerator 1
FFF           # "n" denominator 1
FFFFFax       # "n" division 1
FFFF          # "n" denominator 2
FFFFFax       # "n" division 2
ax            # execute "n" to print the result
```
We can get rid of any whitespace by placing `x`s between constants since they act as no-ops on numbers.
```dc
FxFxFxFFFFFFFFFFFFFxFFFFFFxFxFFFFFFFFFFFxFFFFFxFxFFFFFFaxFFFFFaxFxFFFFFaxaxFFFFFaxFxFFFFFaxaxFFFFFaxFFFFFFFFFFFFxFFFxFFFFFaxFFFFxFFFFFaxax
```
[Try it online!](https://tio.run/##S0n@/9@tAgyRQQWMqsAQhIslVsAoGAOfCJo5yOIIxf//AwA "dc – Try It Online")