Author:

• Name: Oskar von der Luehe
  Location: CH - Swiss Confederation (Switzerland)

To build:

    make all

To get this to compile with a modern CPP, we had to replace #D with #define.

To use:

Run the program this way:

    ./ovdluhe < textfile

The program stops when it reaches the end of the template buffer by chance or is killed.

Try:

    ./try.sh ; sleep 2 ; ./try.sh

Alternate code:

The author suggested that one varies the definition of P from 2 through 10. As it’s a #define it’s easy to set up.

Alternate build:

    make P=9 clobber alt

You do not have to define P but if you do you can replace the value with whatever you wish, as long as it’s a positive int (or evaluates to a positive int like the default (A<<AP) does). Too high a value will likely cause the program to fail and a negative value will cause a compilation error as will a value that’s not a number.

Alternate use:

    ./ovdluhe.alt

Alternate try:

    ./try.alt.sh

    P=5 ./try.alt.sh

NOTE: if you specify too high a value for P the program might fail. If you specify a value < 0 it will fail to compile.

Judges’ remarks:

Run this program using your favorite text file as input. Files such as mailboxes, man pages and usenet articles are especially recommended. You will get different output each time you run it.

Author’s remarks:

This program implements an “Eddington ape” - it generates random text from a supplied template. The template text file is read through stdin. The larger the template, the better the result. A maximum of 2**12 chars are used. From the template, the program calculates the statistics of chars that immediately follow a given string (correlator string) of a certain length (currently 4 - can be varied by changing the definition for P accordingly). A character is randomly chosen, weighted by its probability to occur after the correlator string. That character is printed to stdout and placed at the end of the correlator string, whose first character is discarded. Meaningful words are therefore usually preserved, the effect on sentences can be dramatically random.

You might want to vary the definition of P between 2 and 10 and observe the result.

Primary files

• ovdluhe.c - entry source code
• Makefile - entry Makefile
• ovdluhe.alt.c - alternate source code
• ovdluhe.orig.c - original source code
• try.alt.sh - script to try alternate code
• try.sh - script to try entry

Secondary files

• 1989_ovdluhe.tar.bz2 - download entry tarball
• README.md - markdown source for this web page
• .entry.json - entry summary and manifest in JSON
• .gitignore - list of files that should not be committed under git
• .path - directory path from top level directory
• index.html - this web page

Jump to: top