BrainFuck is an esoteric programming language that is surprisingly easy to implement. It is almost on the same level as “Hello, world!”, but for compilers and interpreters. In this post, ill share my new little BrainFuck compiler I built with a bash script.
BrainFuck has 8 simple instructions:
Instruction | Operation |
---|---|
> |
increment data pointer |
< |
decrement data pointer |
+ |
increment the byte at the data pointer |
- |
decrement the byte at the data pointer |
. |
print the current byte to stdout |
, |
read one byte from stdin to the current byte |
[ |
jump to the matching ] if the current byte is 0 |
] |
jump to the matching [ if the current byte is nonzero |
BrainFuck works on a “tape”. This is essentially a massive array, with a pointer that moves around. Luckily, this can be implemented with a tiny bit of C. (Thanks wikipedia)
BF | C code |
---|---|
> |
++ptr; |
< |
--ptr; |
+ |
++*ptr; |
- |
--*ptr; |
. |
putchar(*ptr); |
, |
*ptr=getchar(); |
[ |
while (*ptr) { |
] |
} |
Due to the fact BF has a direct conversion to C, I figured: “Why not just use sed to make a BF compiler?”. And so I did.
The script is available at git.io/JvIHm, and works as follows:
stdio.h
and creates a char arrayThank you for reading this post. If you enjoyed the content, and want to let me know, or want to ask any questions, please contact me via one of the methods listed here. If you would like to be notified about future posts, feel free to load my rss feed into your favorite feed reader, or follow me on Twitter for notifications about my work and future posts.
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