User talk:Gerard Schildberger

Flag as incorrect

Hi, I think you left a comment the above will erroneously return:... on a PLI example. Could you change this to use the template incorrect so that PLI users are flagged that the example needs attention. Thanks. --Paddy3118 18:22, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

I confess I didn't know the proper methodology to be used (this was my very first time on Rosetta Code). The fallout from that excursion was not what I expect at all, not exactly a pleasent experience. It would've been nice to actually include the righteous text so I could hit the ground running and re-enter the correct incorrect template. I had thought that putting a comment near the code would get someone's attention and fix the problem. My bad. I was trying to figure out how to contact the author of the code, but I didn't have the skills at that time. I have previously removed the offending comment, leaving the original problem intact, and as far as I know, the errors are still there. To make it worse, I've already forgotten which entry it was, and looking back at it all, I regret trying to address the issue (error). There are so many such errors that I came across a few weeks ago, and I'm glad I didn't mung up more erroneous pages. I'm wondering at this point if erroneous pages are less erroneous with erroneous corrections? I wish the process would be more forgiving and above all, much easier to implement without the headaches. If I ever get the time, I may revisit some pages, but I rarely look at other people's code anymore, except for clarification of the specifications of the task to be solved. What is the protocol about these talk pages? Do they hang around forever, or am I supposed to delete (edit) them later when they lose their relevance? Gerard Schildberger

Please summarize your edits

Just a little note: when editing, it's polite to include something meaningful in the summary that says what you've done -- for example, if you add a new solution to a task, it's nice to put something like "added language" in the summary to let others know what you've done.

I'm still trying to get the hang of things. I'm not sure of I'm doing this correctly (where to reply/type this stuff). I find this type of "interaction" a bit strange and out-of-sync sort of feeling.

First, I don't even know where this summary thing is (was?) until just recently. Previously, I didn't know what it was for, as I was just adding new code (examples) and thought the adding of a new (code) example was self-explanatory. I'll try to add something like (added new example or some such) if that helps anyone understand what I just did. Hells bells, I don't even understand what I do half the time anyway. Hard to believe, but there are advantages of having senior moments.

Most of my updates (followups) are so minor that it would be distracting for casual readers what I've done, and I try to keep forcing my self to add comments to most of my REXX examples, something which seems might be a waste of time as I see very little evidence elsewhere of copious (or even brief) comments on (at) the statement level. I spend quite a bit of time dumbing-down my code to make it understandable for the novice (REXX) programmer. In doing so, I try to add (statement) comments on what the statements are doing/accomplishing, but the more advanced one gets, the more shortcuts one takes, and the code becomes obtuse with very little effort, sad to say.

REXX leads itself to writing a lot of "one-liner" subroutines (or, at the least, pretty short subroutines/procedures). This hides the commons tasks that happen over and over again, the duldrums of programming. The one-lines one-liners tend to end up at the bottom (end) of the program, usually after some kind of comment fence. Out of sight, out of mind. Most often, the one-lines are very general in nature and have been thourghly tested/debugged, and once written, almost never looked at again --- until Rosetta Code. Most REXX programmers write code on serveral classes of computers, PC's just being one. There is a lot of boilerplate to keep track of, environmental impacts, restrictions on command options, command names, command formats, terminal (console) support (linesize, screen width), fonts, file structure(s), file naming protocols, security concerns (read/write), operating system quirks (that's the polite word for it), etc, etc, etc. You wouldn'be believe the proglogue code that I have written (collected) over the ... ahem, decades of programming in REXX -- cough, cough, since around 1982 or so. And I'm a regular packrat. PL/I was way back in 1866 , er, make that 1966. Anywhooose, I'll try to make more summaries, even if almost all of them are quite bland and/or uninteresting. Gerard Schildberger

Under Special:Preferences is an option for the wiki to remind you to enter a summary if you forget; I highly recommend turning it on. (Look for "Prompt me when entering a blank edit summary" under the "Editing" tab.) -- Erik Siers 13:14, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Hi Gerard, Adding the summary takes little time, and really helps others. Thanks. --Paddy3118 06:27, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure where these summaries end up, as I never had seen any. Is it under the "history" section? I must confess, when I look at some code, I don't care to read about how and/or when changes where made, all I care about is the final product (so to speak) and I'm not particuraly interestred in the code's change pedigree. But that's me, and I realize that others might find that sort of detail interesting in some way. Gerard Schildberger

The summaries do end up on the page history, but they also end up on Special:RecentChanges and in that page's RSS feed (http://rosettacode.org/mw/index.php?title=Special:RecentChanges&feed=atom). People like to keep an eye on the recent changes feed. Adding a summary there helps us decide if we need to check on an edit. Also you don't need to add a signature (--~~~~) in the summary. It doesn't get evaluated there (as you can probably see in the recent changes feed) and every place that the edit summary shows up already has your username and a timestamp attached to the edit. --Mwn3d 13:35, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Welcome!

Welcome to Rosetta Code! I'm Mike, and I noticed you created an account.

Some quick things you should be aware of:

Template:Mylang	Helps you show what languages you're familiar with, and helps us become aware of skills with languages we haven't seen.
Category:Unimplemented tasks by language	A place to find tasks missing solutions in various languages.
Blogs, twitter, facebook...	We have them, and are interested in yours.
Special:Webchat	Logs you into #rosettacode on the Freenode IRC channel. Not usually the most active communications medium, but occasionally helpful. It's logged at http://irclog.perlgeek.de/rosettacode/today.
Rosetta Code:Village Pump	A general Q/A and discussion area.
Rosetta Code:Finances	For most of Rosetta Code's history, expenses have been paid out of my pocket. I can't afford that much longer, and so you can see the state of Rosetta Code's finances, and how you may help. If you enjoy or are excited about the site, please consider reading through it.

Sorry for the boilerplate; it can be a bit difficult giving an individual greeting to each person. If you post information about your technical interests and background, I'll probably read it. If you already have put that kind of information on your user page, I probably already have; I'm always interested in how people do and can benefit from Rosetta Code.--Michael Mol 12:31, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Too much text on a page

Please try not to put more than a few KBs on a task page for each example. When the task pages get too large it gets difficult to manage. If you must add large examples or large output sections, please put them on a separate page and link them. --Mwn3d 03:57, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

If you really want to do a large Sierpinski triangle, do it as an image (no more than 800 pixels wide?) and use that. The code to do that instead of an ASCII version can be seen as an Extra Credit item, and it has the advantage of keeping the page much smaller. –Donal Fellows 09:36, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by as ASCII version. Are you referring to ASCII-7 bit? I often use extended ASCII (8 bits), code page 437, as that's the code page that the DOS prompt window uses (as well as the old DOS systems pre-Windows) --- at least, in the USA. I re-wrote the REXX program to use the ASCII-7 characters as a default, with support for the user to specify full ASCII-8 character codes.

I still haven't found out how to create another (separate) page to hold larger examples. I also have to learn how to link them. Gerard Schildberger

If you want to create a new page, simply type the intended title in the search bar on the left (you should probably do this in a new tab/window) and hit "Go". The page it takes you to will have a "create" tab at the top and (I think) a link somewhere in the text of the page that will let you create the page. From there, it's just like editing any other page. If you're creating a separate page for a large example or large output sample, you should keep the title of the new page to the form of "task title/language name" or something similar (if you get it wrong, someone will probably correct it). To link to that page (or any other page on the wiki) from the task page, put the title between two pairs of square brackets: [[Page title here]]. You can read up on all sorts of neat wiki tricks here. Also you can watch the Recent changes feed after you make edits to see what other people do to them (this is where the edit summary comes in handy). --Mwn3d 15:01, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Request for dialogue

The text of an email sent to Gerard: <lang email>From: Paddy 3118 <paddy3118@xxx.net> Date: 7 December 2010 04:40 Subject: Rosetta code. To: GerardS@zzz.net

Hi Gerard, Could you visit your talk page on Rosetta Code and chat about some of the issues raised?

Thanks.

- Paddy3118.</lang>

I was beginning to wonder what

[]   Watch this page

did     as I never got any notification(s) of any page watched. I've since learned that I had never entered an E-mail address (I had assummed that "it" would notify me when I logged on Rosetta Code). I never did like entering my E-mail address on a public forum, but ... I guess it is necessary for a diaglog in this forum. As a result, I'm desperately trying to play catchup and it's a bit overwhelming. Gerard Schildberger

My email, and response

Sorry Paddy; at the point where people start sending open letters, I figure it's time I finally take a look.

<lang email>On Tue, Dec 7, 2010 at 6:21 PM, Gerard Schildberger <GerardS@rrt.net> wrote:

   Michael Mol:

   ----- Original Message -----
   From: "Michael Mol" <mikemol@gmail.com>
   To: "Gerard Schildberger" <GerardS@rrt.net>
   Sent: Tuesday, December 07, 2010 08:53
   Subject: Rosetta Code, edits and communications

   | Hey, it's me, Short Circuit.[1]
   |
   | I've been the recipient of some rumbles (not just from Paddy) about
   | folks wanting to have a dialog with you in your user talk page[2]. I
   | don't know your reasons for not communicating there, and I usually try
   | to leave the community alone when it comes to on-site activity, but
   | one of my responsibilities is to step in and try to resolve things
   | before they becomes major issues in the community.

   I had tried to use the talk page, but found that it didn't work, so I
   just continued added programs to solve various tasks.  It's not
   intuitive why (to me, anyway) why there needs to be a talk page
   when a simple E-mail would suffice.

Understood. Originally, I think, the "talk" pages were a simple hack by the original MediaWiki/Wikipedia devs to

provide a public discourse option. (They use the same formatting syntax and logic as any other page.) Primarily
they get used on pages in the 'Main' namespace, but I suspect it was deemed simpler to enable them across all
namespaces. I think they generally get used for "front-channel" (where email might be thought of as "back-

channel"), open communication.

Personally, I think the Talk namespaces' behavior is a hack, and I'd rather see an NNTP back-end, or at least a

decently-designed threaded forum. Unfortunately, the more I write and/or add, the more I have to maintain,
Rosetta Code isn't my bread and butter, and so I work with what I can.

    After all, E-mail gets to me
   directly, and I don't get on the Rosetta Code site that often.  Also,
   some people don't interact well in forums, 

Understood. Truth by told, I have two primary ways I keep up with the site. The first is email (the site emails

me whenever a page on my "Watchlist" is edited. The second is the RSS feed found on the "recent changes" page.

   ... if you're a student of newsgroups, then you know of what I speak.   Not all discourse
   is benificial.

Believe me, I understand. I haven't been on newsgroups myself in a while, but some email lists have their problems, too.

As the founder and owner of the site, I have three primary roles. The first is to make sure the site stays online

and functioning. (Pay for the hardware, maintain the software). The second is to watch the forum behavior on the
site, identify trouble spots, and attempt to interpret, moderate and intervene before things flare up and I wind
up with a community schism on my hands. The third is to keep the site fluid and beneficial to a large cross-

section of users and audience.

   | To that end, I'd like to offer some advice.
   |
   | First, you should check your user account preferences[3], and supply
   | the server software with your email address. It will happily email you
   | whenever someone wants to talk to you through the wiki software.
   |
   | Second, you should probably reply to messages left in your talk page.
   | I don't know if you've seen them or not (it doesn't seem you provided
   | the server software with your email address, so it's plausible you
   | haven't), but people have left notes in good nature offering ways for
   | you to interact more cleanly with the site structure and software.

   Yes, if fact, that is exactly what happened.  I didn't know that I had
   to provide an E-mail address to RC.  I have since done that.  I didn't
   even know that I had stuff there to read, yet another place to check
   to see if there are messages.

Completely understood. As far as system configuration, I could require an email address to proceed with sign-up,

but many folks have privacy concerns about giving their email address out, and wouldn't supply it anyway. It
happens, and we figure things out as we need to.

   Since I'm writing to you in the same good faith as you are, I would
   like to converse (somehow) about the general nature of quite a few
   of the tasks.

By all means! I appreciate the interaction. Before I continue reading, however, I'll note that every time I've

tried to place restriction on the tasks, I discover people find exceptions and ways that make the tasks I've
written problematic in some fashion. Also, I'm trying to take an explanatory and speculative position, not an 

apologist one; we've got all kinds of room for improvement, and I'm always looking for ways to get the site and

community functioning more comfortably and smoothly. (See my third role I noted above.)

   Almost all of them assume an ASCII environment (which shouldn't
   automatically be assumed), and many many of the tasks are very
   loosely written and can be interpreted in too many (wrong) ways.

Understood. It's very difficult to write a task description that speaks to the intent of what the task writer

wants to expose and explore in the code examples. For tasks I've written, I've found that most hit one of three
failure cases:

1) Solutions solve the exact letter of the task without hitting the concept I wanted to explore. 2) Solutions aren't written because the letter of the task makes incorrect assumptions unnecessary to the concept

I wanted to explore.

3) Solutions aren't written because the task is too vague, and people don't know what to do.

The sequence I've observed to work the best, as far as creation of successful tasks:

1) Someone creates a task, and uses

Gerard Schildberger is a draft programming task. It is not yet considered ready to be promoted as a complete task, for reasons that should be found in its talk page.

instead of

Gerard Schildberger
You are encouraged to solve this task according to the task description, using any language you may know.

, to invite people to critique it and add

some trial solutions.

2) As people add trial solutions, they'll hit on bugs in the spec 3) The 'talk' page for the task, and folks get together (usually) in good faith to figure out the best way to describe the task to meet the original writer's desires. 4) The task is refined, and we jump back to step 2.

5) Eventually people don't see a need to refine the task farther, and the task gets switched from

Gerard Schildberger is a draft programming task. It is not yet considered ready to be promoted as a complete task, for reasons that should be found in its talk page.

to

Gerard Schildberger
You are encouraged to solve this task according to the task description, using any language you may know.

. If I have time, I'll throw a note out to RC's Twitter and Facebook pages announcing the new task. Sometimes step 1 is skipped, and the author uses

Gerard Schildberger
You are encouraged to solve this task according to the task description, using any language you may know.

instead of

Gerard Schildberger is a draft programming task. It is not yet considered ready to be promoted as a complete task, for reasons that should be found in its talk page.

. When that happens, steps 2

and onward still occur; it just gets a little rougher.

   Because of this, lots of examples are wrong (but I surely don't want
   to throw a monkey wrench in the works, and slight someone's code, just
   because the problem (task) wasn't stated clearly or even, correctly.

Understood completely. Not all of the tasks are well-written. Not all of the examples are well-written.

We have some templates (we call them ENA templates, short for 'examples needing attention') that allow people to

mark code examples as erroneous or faulty in some fashion. When those templates are used correctly, they
examples in question get listed on that language's "Unimplemented in X" page under "examples needing attention".

The templates we have aren't necessarily ideal in their coverage and description. That's another work-in- progress, of course.

While writing this email, though, I had an idea for a flag which could be used to handle potentially incorrect

code without necessarily carrying a connotation that could be insulting to the original code's author. I'll have
to give that some more thought.

   A petty case in point,  The  Amb  task.    The wording suggests the Amb
   operator takes   some   number of expressions,  and the task is to give
   an example.   Quite a few programs assume  exactly (only) four sets
   of words, while the intent (I believe) is to code a general Amb operator
   that works on    SOME    (should say  ANY)  number of    expressions.
   A small but profound difference in the wording.

   The task also assumes that there is only one answer,  while in fact,
   the general case may have  no  or  many answers.  The task stated to
   find  THE  answer, and didn't say anything about the posibility of showing
   other answers (if there were any).   ... And so it goes.    It didn't mention
   if   "the"   would match up to  "Einstein" for example  (caseless compariosns),
   or what to do about punctuation  (the obvious thing to do would be to ignore
   'em).   Yes, yes, I know, there weren't any of those pesky critters...

I'd encourage you to bring this up on the talk page. It's possible we can deprecate the task and offer a better

one. Or correct the existing one. When that task was created, I tried (and failed) to understand what Amb was
about. I'm not that high in math...I've only got an associate's degree, and only got as far as Calc 2. I suspect
most of what I know about math (beyond Calc 2, anyway), I've absorbed from watching Rosetta Code's community
provide readable implementations of Wikipedia pages.

   There are so many of these types of loosy-goosy type of definitions/rules that
   caused quite a few examples to not fulfill the requirements, at least, not the
   intent, and since I haven't got a dog in the fight, I feel better if I wouldn't
   throw stones (as least, not in a public forum).   Hardly anything comes of
   those fights/discussions,  as some people have quite a bit of emotion
   vested in the status quo or already-posted solutions.

And that's two parts of what I try to be there for. One, to see problems with the status quo and work toward

fixing them. RC doesn't do anyone any good if it gets stale and crusty, internally or out. Two, to try to keep
the Rosetta Code wiki community genial and inclusive--we're very domain-focused, Rosetta code is a sort of tower
of Babel, and there aren't very many people with the skill and interest needed to put the kinds of content on
the site that it can potentially absorb. It can't afford to be hostile, as a community. Community management is,
again, one of my two fundamental roles on the site.

     I have plenty of
   other bliss projects that I'm working on at the moment.    Bliss projects are
   those that give joy ...

Understood. Rosetta Code is something of a bliss project for me; I get a warm fuzzy every time I find that it

contributed some way to the improvement of a language, and every time I find people enjoy using it to improve
their own skills and understanding. It makes me feel like I'm contributing to the field somehow.

   Since this is Christmas time, I would just wish for some simple, clear, and
   concise definitions (rules) of the tasks.

We do what we can. Perhaps some point soon we can come up with some good guidelines for how to build tasks, and

can go back and verify tasks against those guidelines.

     That, and world peace.    .... and
   enough money to pay for the heat ... but I digress.

I got lucky on that last; dress warm and keep the computers running. :)

   As the old saw goes, be careful of what you ask.    Anywhoooose....
   If I included a "fix this example" thingy in every case like that, well, it
   would be pitchforks and torches time --- and I don't want my castle
   burned down..

Understood.

     I've worked in programming for quite a few decades,
   and the number of times I've seen a correctly stated requirement (task)
   can be counted on one hand.      Oooooooh, if you had a few more
   hours of reading time...

You might find a GraphJam I created yesterday to be amusing: http://cheezburger.com/shortcircuit6453/lolz/View/4236897280

   I wish a lot of the tasks wouldn't be so ego-centric.     That is a problem
   that should be address, in my humble opinion.    Well, maybe next
   Christmas then ...

   | Thanks for all your contributions on the site!

Yuppers, I'll continue for a few more examples, unless it
becomes a royal pain in the neck-hole to continue.    So far, the stuff that I've coded is mostly Micky Mouse
stuff.   I'm doing the simple ones that I can bang out in a few minutes.    I spend quite a bit of time
re-working the example to properly present the data  (to wit, reading the data once, finding the "widest" value,
and then making the output in a neat columnar format for instance.  Another is adding commas for the human
bean's eyeballs.

     The language that I'm using is REXX,  and it doesn't have any of the common trigonometric, geometric, 
     statistical,  and other higher math  functions at all, so I have to write them.   That's not a problem, but 
     when I want to show a simple solution to something, I have to drag all that other baggage along, and that 
     makes some examples a bit ... well, verbose, and hides (if not completely overshadowing) the intent behind 
     the example.    "C"  kinda has the same problem, but it hides it with the INCLUDE statement, so people 
     don't see the baggage, but it's there, of course.   One problem with REXX (as it's an interpreted 
     language), everything is out in the open and you can't hide the dirty linen and soiled clothes.

   Later, 'gator.

   Gerard Schildberger

Do you mind if I post this email on the wiki in your Talk namespace? It'd be handy for clarifying things (I think a few people are annoyed with you), and (on reading it) it should help set a calming tone. It's also the first chance I've had in a while for distilling into words my presence on the site. ;)

--

wq</lang>

(I got permission to post the reply.) --Michael Mol 04:11, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Gulp. I should've re-read my reply before I OKed it. Oh well, what's done is done. Water under the bridge, Split milk. Yesterday's news. Water over the dam. Yada, yada, yada.

I'm still in the midst of writing my general-purpose, nicer-slicer-dicer, all-in-one, one size fits all, money-back guaranteed (REXX) calculator (for a lack of a better word) program. It has over 1,225 functions in it, unlimited precision, supports plotting, histograms, many, many format of output. It runs almost anywhere and (for a few like-minded friends and myself), puts the recreation and fun back in recreational mathematics again.

I've found that quite a few of the tasks in Rosetta Code can be solved by a REXX routine (subroutine) that's in my "calculator". I rip out the code from the offending, er, REXX code, and, ahhhhh, the polite phrase would be to make it (more or less) readable to the novice programmer, and then add comments for most of the statements. At least, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it. I'm getting more and more lazy as I think adding comments to my code is like making a silk purse out of a sow's ear, and have become more lax in the addition of REXX statement comments. Gerard Schildberger

Ackermann function

Hi,

There is a mistake in your Rexx code for Ackermann function (version 3). When m=4, the result is not a "double power", but a tetration, that is : ack(4, n) = 2 ^^ (n + 3) - 3 = 2^(2^(...^2)) - 3 when there are n + 3 occurrences of the number two in the power term.

For ack(4, 2), it's 2^2^2^2^2 - 3 = 2^65536 - 3, which is quite big, but manageable. For ack(4, 3), it would be 2^(2^65536) - 3, which is *too* big ! I let you imagine what ack(4, 15) should really be. ;-)

Thanks for the heads up. I fixed the Ackermann (version 3) example.

The ackerman(4,3) is $2^{(2.00352993e19728)}$ ----- which, like ya said, is just too big.

The ackerman(4,15) is $2^{2^{2^{2^{2^{2^{2^{2^{2^{2^{2^{2^{2^{2^{2^{2}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}$ ----- for a total of $15$ times, and then subtract $3$.

That's a pretty gihugeic number, if not gi-normous.
I don't think it'll fit in the known universe. -- Gerard Schildberger 20:33, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Regarding Whitespace

You misunderstand the intent (and syntax) of the Whitespace programming language. Source code is composed solely of spaces, tabs, and newlines; flagging Whitespace solutions as missing source is silly. It's also rather odd that you seem to have singled the language out for missing output on tasks where many (if not most) solutions have also refrained from showing redundant output that would only serve to bloat the page.

Sorry, I didn't (or couldn't) see a source program (or tabs, newlines...). I was just about to change my flagging to reflect only the missing output, but you removed both reasons before I could correct it (removed the missing source part). I couldn't tell the blanks from blanks (the foreground from the background). I didn't single out that language for missing the output. It was the one that I noticed, I see nothing odd about noting missing output of the example that was just updated. I don't think showing three lines wouldn't add to bloat (especially when some examples show leading zeroes, and others don't), but that would be an interesting theory as to why some examples don't produce what the task asks for. As an aside, if people can't see (or read) the program, why show it? It may not be missing (maybe another way would be to say it isn't viewable), but could there be another way to render it on Rosetta Code? Further, if an example doesn't meet the task's requirements, does that make it eligible for flagging or not? If not, where is the "cutoff"? If yes, is there a burden on the flagger to mark all the other examples with similar afflictions? -- Gerard Schildberger 17:17, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

That you didn't (or couldn't) perceive any Whitespace source is very likely the fault of your browser; GeSHi supports Whitespace by displaying spaces on a blue background, tabs on pink. Perhaps I've misunderstood, and you're merely suggesting using S and T instead? Either way, a language's inscrutability shouldn't disqualify its otherwise valid solutions; very few people can "read" brainfuck in any meaningful sense, but I doubt you'd raise the same objection against it. I do understand that Whitespace is something of a "joke" language, but the fact of the matter is that its Turing-completeness alone should be sufficient to warrant its inclusion on the pages of Rosetta Code. It's also worth noting that I've taken the liberty of including pseudo-Assembly equivalents with all of my Whitespace solutions to more legibly illustrate what the code is doing. As for flagging for missing output, it seems the kind of thing that would best be served by common sense. Isopsephile 18:00, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

(Yes, you misunderstood, I am NOT suggesting using what you described --- concerning the S and Ts.) I use Aurora (Firefox 21.0a2) for all my internet needs. I see that Firefox renders all of Whitespace programs as pure blanks on my system, while Microsoft's Internet Explorer shows "blocked" colors (for matters of privacy, speed, and such; I don't/won't use MS IE). So it appears that I would have to use MS IE to even view the Whitespace programs on Rosetta Code. I never had even thought of not including or excluding languages (because or lack of valid solutions or any other criteria, joke languages not withstanding). My (incorrect) flagging was based on lack of output as per the task's requirements (you had removed my incorrect flag in toto, and I was just about to remove the missing source part of the incorrect flag). I can understand your sensitivity to having one language example marked as incorrect while there are others also incorrect (missing output). That doesn't make it correct, however. Most likely, if somebody else marks the others as incorrect, the incorrect flags would probably just be removed anyway, with the same reasoning. I won't poke that hornet's nest again. Having a discussing about what is incorrect vs. correct, me thinks, in this context is a fruitless endeavor and probably nothing will be resolved. If missing output (as per the task's requirements) isn't incorrect, then will the flags that I've observed for (other) incorrect flags for missing output (in other Rosetta Code tasks) be removed or amended? Most likely not. -- Gerard Schildberger 18:49, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

I do not read the task as requiring the output to be shown, merely "produced" to some destination unspecified. The fact that the output is arbitrarily large only reinforces this interpretation, to my mind. --TimToady 19:00, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

I think it is good to add output if you can and it's not too long, or add a statement that the output is the same as for another language example if you must. Sadly a lot of contributors share the view that if there is any way of completing the letter of the task without showing output - then they will not show it.
Oh well. That's life :-)
--Paddy3118 19:20, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

For Binary digits: The task is to output the sequence of binary digits for a given non-negative integer.   Most programming examples used the three shoulds:   "The decimal value x should produce yyy ",   that's only three lines of output.   As for the Count in octal, the wording is certainly subject to interpretation: to produce a sequential count in octal, starting ... Each number should appear on a single line ... etc.   Now, if the task was to write a program THAT produces a sequential count ... but the difference is (very) subtle.   However, some of the examples DO NOT start at zero (as per the task's requirement), and if they did, some would show a blank (by suppressing all leading zeroes).   Again, I won't poke that hornet's nest, I'll leave it to others to flag those as incorrect.   I've used up my magic bullets.   We could on and on about the lack of output (and/or it's hugeness), if a program is incorrect (or not), and doesn't show (correct or incorrect) output. If no output is shown, then it most likely can't be flagged as incorrect.   I know enough of some languages, but not enough to start a "flagging" war.   It's like pushing a chain uphill.   I would hope that the programming examples on Rosetta Code would be exacting in that regard.   Once an incorrect program doesn't meet or complete a task's requirement(s), than other programs may follow suit (because nobody flagged it as incorrect), saying, "my output is the same as the other's output(s)", or somesuch words.   And so it goes. -- Gerard Schildberger 19:35, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Another consideration is that for some tasks such as these, the output is Very Boring, and accomplishes little except to obscure the solutions. --TimToady 19:53, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

(I wish I had thought of that reason when completing exams.)   What about the incorrect solutions (regarding the output)?   If they hadn't provided output, I'd never noticed that they started with unity instead of zero.   It might be boring as boring can be, but it provides a way to catch (obvious) errors, even as something as simply counting in octal.   That's about as boring as it can get, and yet, still people get it wrong.   If they don't get flagged, they don't get corrected.   Those mistakes will still be there long after we're wormfood.   I know I'd like any of my mistakes pointed out, no matter how picayune. -- Gerard Schildberger 20:08, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Now this:

(I wish I had thought of that reason when completing exams.)

Really made my morning :-)

Maybe we could adopt a "show some suitable output unless the task explicitly says not to" practice for a good RC example? --Paddy3118 04:34, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

REXX Long Multiplication

Sorry for the re-addition of the comment, but it doesn't really matter that REXX does its multiplication on decimal strings -- all languages with bignum supprt are doing the same thing too, they just happen to represent the numbers with some base that is bigger than 10 (sometimes much bigger), but the basic algorithm is exactly the same there as it is in REXX. Therefore, claiming that REXX already does this multiplication is something that could just as well apply to any of these other languages too.

--Elibarzilay (talk) 06:52, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Well, you say I am claiming that it does, and you are claiming that it doesn't.   When you put it like that,

it sounds like my opinion is being impuned.   This is no place for a shouting match.   What do you

want me to do besides "claim" the facts?   By the way, not ALL languages with "bignum" support do it with a

a base bigger than 10.   REXX does not. -- Gerard Schildberger (talk) 07:14, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I'm saying that not only REXX does it, *all* of the bignum libraries do it. The fact that some random library uses base 10 or base 256 or 65536 or whatever is irrelevant since the algorithm is the same for all of them, and re-implementing this algorithm is as bogus with any language as it is with REXX. The page seems like it requests an explicit implementation, regardless of bignum support or how its implemented, and if that's taken as is, then the REXX answer is wrong because it does not implement the algorithm. Like I said on the discussion page, I really don't care either way, but it should be clear which way it should go -- and if an implementation is required it is extremely unfair to single out about 3 solutions as broken when in fact many others on the page are broken. --Elibarzilay (talk) 07:48, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

No, REXX does explicit arithmetic   not   with BigNums, but with a method that people use when doing arithmetic on paper.   There is no base 10 in that the numbers are stored as characters, not a array of numbers in base 2, base 10, or possibly a higher base.   REXX does NOT perform arithmetic like any other langage (with the possible except of SNOBOL).   You just can't say that REXX does arithmetic like every language that has BigNum capability. -- Gerard Schildberger (talk) 08:01, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

It looks like you're not aware of how bignums are implemented: an arbitrary-length list of "digits". Operations are implemented in terms of these lists. Usually, the digits are big with each one being a machine word. But it doesn't matter if you use a smaller base-10, everything works the same, and the resulting algorithm *is* what you would do on paper.

But all of this is irrelevant: they asked for an explicit implementation of unlimited integers, and using a library means that you don't do what they asked. The way which the REXX implementation does things is irrelevant to such an implementation, or the lack of such an implementation. --Elibarzilay (talk) 08:43, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

---

Er, no.   REXX does arithmetic on characters (which just happen to be digits, just as people do on paper.
REXX is the only language (except for possible SNOBOL) that does this.
Other languages using BigNum (or extended precision) support work on binary representation of decimal digits,
not characters.   Please note that decimal strings are not the same as character strings, but sometimes
I use them interchangeably to make it easier to comprehend.   I had a very long discussion on this very subject
a while back before it was clear that REXX doesn't store numbers, just characters.   This came up when
I tried to explain that the internal (ASCII) representation of 37 is '3337'x   (or '33'c) -- with a length of two
characters (exactly). -- Gerard Schildberger (talk) 07:07, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

This is also not relevant, since the algorithm itself is the same, whether done with decimal digits or another base, whether represented as ASCII numerals or plain numbers, and whether stored in RAM or on printed paper. And since its the same, any of these languages with bignums should be able to have just the quick multiplication as a solution. --Elibarzilay (talk) 07:51, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Er, no again.   The algorithm (doing multiplication on paper) is not the same as what is done (with computers using BigNum) with binary diginits, decimal digits, or higher bases.   The BigNum algorithm is not a mimic of pencil arithmetic, to coin a phrase. -- Gerard Schildberger (talk) 08:06, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Discussion moved from task page

Hi, I just moved your discussion from the task page. It may need cleanup. We don't normally have such discussions on the task page. --Paddy3118 (talk) 10:05, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I was considering flagging it incorrect, but as there's a lot of "investment" and/or "ownership" (signed work) involved, it fastly dissolves into a discussion about opinions, with rationalizations and then, even more questions about the questions.   If incorrect statements are made in the section header (and/or trailer), is an off-page rebuttal/correction the way to go?   Normally, I would expect the incorrect statement to be corrected, but then it gets into a situation of who is correct in correcting the incorrect statement(s)?   Normally, there isn't that much preaching done in section headers, saying things like this version doesn't need to use what the previous version used, so this one is (implied) better.   Or, this version works with all REXXs, (but clearly doesn't).   Putting a rebuttal elsewhere isn't very topical. -- Gerard Schildberger (talk) 00:43, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

  I don't believe in adding versions (of the same language) that do less, and with restrictions that make the solution incorrect.   And so it goes. -- Gerard Schildberger (talk) 00:43, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Ironclad programming language

I've noticed that you've added the "Ironclad" programming language. Do you have more information about it? The only thing a quick web search turned up is "Ironclad C++", a type-safe subset of C++. Is that the language you mean?

I have no info about it except that Ironclad was used several times in the header statement (as a language) and I had entered it as a language in the Ironclad entry;   the entry was missing the language tag.   Not added the tag would mean that some lists wouldn't be maintained, nor would the language be counted elsewhere (such as code popularity). -- Gerard Schildberger (talk) 19:42, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

I have used Ironclad with Template:libheader which indicates the libraries used in the code.--Andreas Perstinger (talk) 21:44, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

The reason why I ask is that just a few days ago I've added the Ironclad library for Common Lisp. So we now have a nameclash. I will move the library to [[Category:Ironclad (library)]] if both names are really equal.--Andreas Perstinger (talk) 19:21, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Since I don't know the difference between the Ironclad language and the Ironclad library, perhaps someone with more knowledge can address this issue.   Any "damage" done at this point can easily be undone. -- Gerard Schildberger (talk) 19:42, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Ok, I have removed {{language}} from Category:Ironclad since it looks like there is no language Ironclad.--Andreas Perstinger (talk) 21:44, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

If   Ironclad   isn't a language, then why was it used in the     {{header|Ironclad}}     tags?   What follows the     header|     is supposed to be a language (as far as I know).   The   Category Page   is meant for create a page for the language.   This is what I read from the documentation on the   Add a Language   page. -- Gerard Schildberger (talk) 22:17, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Where have you seen that it was used with Template:header?--Andreas Perstinger (talk) 22:46, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

I can't find any now, they're all using LIBRARY.   I am a bit befuddled as I may have confused it with the Shen and Coco entries when I was doing the searching for language orphans.   Sorry for the confusion and wasting your time. -- Gerard Schildberger (talk) 23:06, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

---

P.S.: I'm in the process of finding language orphans and adding a   category:xxx   and   xxx   page for them.   The only bona fide I'm using (more of an assumption than anything) is the fact that   xxx   was used as a language in the   header   tag. -- Gerard Schildberger (talk) 19:42, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

If you add a language page in the main namespace (i.e. not a category page), you should just redirect to the category page (see Rosetta_Code:Add_a_Language#Redirect).--Andreas Perstinger (talk) 21:44, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Yup, I missed that step. -- Gerard Schildberger (talk) 22:17, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Tildes in edit summaries

~~~~ doesn't work in edit summaries. Fortunately, it's unnecessary. Take a look at Special:RecentChanges or a specific page's history and you can see that every edit's author shows up automatically, while your tildes remain tildes. —Underscore (Talk) 01:44, 27 February 2014 (UTC)