Questions tagged [code-generation]
For challenges where answers are expected to generate code.
98 questions
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A million and one constants
When code golfing, it can be useful to write numbers succinctly. This challenge involves using a source language to generate code for a target language. For the submission to be valid, it must ...
- 3,071
8
votes
1
answer
393
views
Sequence of programs that prints the next one with length growth being equal to π
Challenge
You must produce an infinite sequence of programs \$P_0, P_1, P_2,\$ … such that each program \$P_n\$, when run, prints the exact source code of \$P_{n+1}\$ and then halts.
Each program \$...
- 69
13
votes
12
answers
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Bespoke numbers
Introduction
Bespoke is an esoteric programming language I created in January 2025, where the commands are encoded into the lengths of words in the program. For example, ...
- 1,261
33
votes
26
answers
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Print 4 billion if statements
Recently (okay, December 2023, I'm a little late) there's been a meme going around about a program checking if a 32-bit unsigned integer is even or odd using four billion if statements:
...
- 46.2k
7
votes
3
answers
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Golf an HQ9+ transpiler
There was a prior question about golfing an HQ9+ compiler that translates HQ9+ code into the language it is written in, but that was closed as a duplicate of the interpreter challenge because ...
- 1,252
13
votes
17
answers
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Make Code Printing X without X
The challenge is simple: write a program which takes in some non-empty string \$n\$ consisting of only uppercase and lowercase ASCII letters, and outputs the code for a program (in the same language) ...
- 7,465
20
votes
31
answers
3k
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Restricted Meta-Cat
Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to write a program in a language of your choice that, when given a string (limited to printable ASCII) as input, outputs a new program in the same ...
- 12.6k
8
votes
3
answers
732
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Expand Emmet HTML Abbreviations
Emmet is a text-editor and IDE plugin for writing HTML code using much fewer keypresses. You might think of it like a code-golfing HTML preprocessor. Its syntax is based on CSS selectors.
Your ...
- 12.6k
18
votes
24
answers
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Meta-cat program
Write a program or function that takes input and outputs/returns a full program (in the same language) that outputs said input.
Note that the input may contain any printable ASCII character or newline ...
- 2,105
27
votes
12
answers
1k
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Increment, decrement, undo, peek
Write a program or function (hereafter "function") that returns or prints the source code of four new functions: Increment, decrement, undo, and peek.
The initial function contains an ...
- 11.9k
6
votes
1
answer
658
views
Convert 256-wrap brainfuck into 257-wrap brainfuck
Usually each cell in brainfuck has 256 states, which is not enough to tell whether input is EOF or a character (usually \xFF but ...
- 32.6k
3
votes
0
answers
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Hello Shue! (Robbers)
Cops thread (read first)
Robbers, your task is to find a Shue program p that when given the cops input i, outputs a program <...
- 8,048
4
votes
2
answers
394
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Hello Shue! (Cops)
Robbers thread
In this cops-and-robbers challenge, your task is to write a program h that outputs "Hello Shue!". Next, you have to choose a string ...
- 8,048
12
votes
8
answers
1k
views
Iterative Quine
Create a program which prints itself, followed by an additional program. This additional program should print the first program, itself, and then a third program. This continues until the nth program, ...
- 2,647
19
votes
2
answers
648
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Counting and so on
Content
You count numbers every day (I think), and most of you know how to count properly, the one next to 1 is 2, and the next ...
- 1,807