learn-tilde-ath

[learn-tilde-ath]

Two questions: 1: did you actually make ~ATH, and 2: what was that Sburb text-game that you mentioned on an ask on another blog

While I was back in highschool (iirc?) I made a thing which I titled “drocta ~ATH”, which is a programming language with the design goals of:

1: being actually possible to implement, (and therefore, for example, not having things be tied to the lifespans of external things)

2: being Turing complete, and accept user input and produce output for the user to read, such that in principle one could write useful programs in it (though it is not meant to be practical to do so).

3: matching how ~ATH is depicted in the comic, as closely as I can, with as little as possible that I don’t have some justification for based on what is shown in the comic (plus the navigation page for the comic, which depicts a “SPLIT” command). For example, I avoid assuming that the language has any built-in concept of numbers, because the comic doesn’t depict any, and I don’t need to assume it does, provided I make some reasonable assumptions about what BIFURCATE (and SPLIT) do, and also assume that the BIFURCATE command can also be done in reverse.

However, I try to always make a distinction between “drocta ~ATH”, which is a real thing I made, and “~ATH”, which is a fictional programming language in which it is possible to write programs that e.g. wait until the author’s death and the run some code, or implement some sort of curse that involves the circumstantial simultaneous death of two universes.

In addition, please be aware that the code quality of my interpreter for drocta ~ATH, is very bad! It does not use a proper parser or the like, and, iirc (it has probably been around a decade since I made any serious edits to the code, so I might recall wrong), it uses the actual line numbers of the file for the control flow? (Also, iirc, the code was written for python 2.7 rather than for python 3.) At some point I started a rewrite of the interpreter (keeping the language the same, except possibly fixing bugs), but did not get very far.

If, impossibly, I got some extra time I wouldn’t otherwise have that somehow could only be used for the task of working on drocta ~ATH related stuff, I would be happy to complete that rewrite, and do it properly, but as time has gone on, it seems less likely that I will complete the rewrite.

I am pleased that all these years later, I still get the occasional message asking about drocta ~ATH, and remain happy to answer any questions about it! I enjoy that people still think the idea is interesting.

(If someone wanted to work with me to do the rewrite, that might provide me the provided motivation to do the rewrite, maybe? No promises though. I somewhat doubt that anyone would be interested in doing such a collaboration though.)

Regarding the text based SBURB game, I assume I was talking about “The Overseer Project”. It was very cool.

Thank you for your questions. I hope this answers it to your satisfaction.

[learn-tilde-ath]

@ karkathateseveryonesposts

Anon in that ask was me, not rping as you say but what I meant from computer-exploding code is I was unsure if ~ATH was supposed to crash once running a code like Sollux's.  Also, there couldn't be a syntax error as the program crashes if I press enter with no code on it yet.

Ah! My apologies for my misunderstanding, I interpreted the reference to computer exploding scripts combined with your handle to [ justification for why I misinterpreted snipped for brevity].

You don’t type the script in when you run the program. You need to first save the script as a seperate file, and then when you run the interpreter, type in the filename.

The last bit of the interpreter says like

filename=raw_input() filelink=open(filename,'r') script=filelink.read(-1) result_obj=evalScript(script,NULL_obj) raw_input("press enter to close")

I probably should have made it more clearly ask for a file name instead of just having a prompt with no explanation.

(also, wow, this reminds me that this code was written in python 2.7 and not python 3. Maybe I should update it to use python 3? There’s also many other things about it that ought to be improved but it isn’t high on my priorities..)

My ~ATH keeps crashing whenever I run a non-computer exploding code, or if I press enter. Why is this?

Based on the username which recently followed this blog at the same time as I received this ask (which I won't say what it was because you asked this on anon, and haven't received permission), I'd guess that you may be running a different version of ~ATH than the one I document here :P

Unfortunately, I don't have a specification for the version you have.

If you have such a specification, or the executable for it, I'd be happy to take a look if you could send it to me, haha.

If on the off chance you are using the version I document here, then presumably you have a syntax error or something in your code?

[learn-tilde-ath]

My ~ATH keeps crashing whenever I run a non-computer exploding code, or if I press enter. Why is this?

Based on the username which recently followed this blog at the same time as I received this ask (which I won't say what it was because you asked this on anon, and haven't received permission), I'd guess that you may be running a different version of ~ATH than the one I document here :P

Unfortunately, I don't have a specification for the version you have.

If you have such a specification, or the executable for it, I'd be happy to take a look if you could send it to me, haha.

If on the off chance you are using the version I document here, then presumably you have a syntax error or something in your code?

[learn-tilde-ath]

yeah, can i make ~ATH continue to generate variables? like if one part of the program dies it generates another variable? because i've been trying to do that lmfao

Hi. Not sure what you mean by continue to generate variables. If you mean like how in lisp you can like, automatically generate a new variable name and then use that variable name, then no, drocta ~ATH doesn't have a feature like that, but I'm guessing that's not what you mean.

Variables are just like, names in your program. If you want more objects, you can just continue bifurcating objects to get more objects.

drocta ~ATH does not support parallelism or concurrency or whatever (though presumably canonical ~ATH would, in some sense. At least, it appears to handle circumstantial simultaneity.), So, if you are referring to drocta ~ATH, then I'm not sure what you mean when you refer to part of the program dying. Though, given that in canonical ~ATH, there is the expression

[THIS,THIS].DIE();

then it seems like, presumably, it should be possible to have something like

THIS.DIE();

in order to describe part of the program dying (ending), without another part doing so.

But, again, drocta ~ATH does not support anything like that. Feel free to make a fork of it which does though. Please let me know if you do!

[learn-tilde-ath]

Happy 10/25

Today is the 10 year anniversary of the destruction of the universe frog. Such an occasion is traditionally celebrated by destroying the universe.

[learn-tilde-ath]

okay, this might be a liiittle specific, and more HS oriented, but still. can you power a First Guardian using ~ATH? and if so, what are some ways?

This is a slightly off of the usual topic of this blog, which is more about a language which I made up and is based on and named after the language in the comic, and attempts to be as close to the comic while still being possible to implement and use, (the language in the comic is not particularly well documented), but I’ll answer it to the best of my abilities.

I’m not sure what you mean by “power”.

“Can I write a first guardian character that has some of their behavior be based on ~ATH in some ways?” : I don’t see any reason why not. If you can do ectobiology with a puppet and a cueball, why not with a computer running a program?

“Can I make a first guardian character who is a first guardian because of the continual execution of a ~ATH script?” : While you can of course write whatever you want, I’m not sure that this is consistent with what is said in acts 1-7 (I have chosen to disregard everything after act 7) about first guardians. It seems like an entity either is or is not a first guardian, and that this fact is established at the time of that entity’s creation. It seems to me like what happens with first guardians is: using ectobiology, the genetic code from some players’ subconscious-or-whatever is combined with some other source(s), and the result is a first guardian.

Oh, I suppose if you just mean “an entity has the powers of a first guardian as a result of a ~ATH script”, then, uh, I guess that doesn’t contradict anything. How would I depict such a script? Well, I don’t know that anything that we’ve seen of the language gives any particularly clear direction for what such a script would look like. If you want it to just have the keywords we’ve seen, possibly re-interpreted to mean something different, I guess one idea could be to like, say bifurcate an existing first guardian into parts with names that seem relevant, and also whatever entity is to have the abilities of a first guardian, and then like, un-bifurcate (unbifurcation is not something shown in the comic, but is something I’ve added to my language, in order to make it usable) the other entity, but with some component of the first guardian mixed in somehow? Though if you did that, you would probably want to justify why, if ~ATH can do that that easily, why it doesn’t happen all the time.

There is very little in terms of rules that the story gives for how ~ATH behaves. If you want to have a ~ATH script “power” a first guardian, just make up some stuff. If you want to depict the actual script, then look at all the pages of the comic that depict code from it, see what it says they do, and just make something up that seems to aesthetically fit.

The language that I have defined (”drocta ~ath”) does not provide any means of doing this, because the language I designed was designed to technically be usable, while also resembling the language in the comic.

I suppose that, as all first guardians get their power from the green sun, and the green sun was created by the circumstantially simultaneous destruction of, uh, either universes A and B, or specifically of A2 and B1, not sure which, and this was in some ways tied to the Möbius Double Reacharoud virus, you could argue that all first guardians get their powers from, something somewhat connected to a ~ATH script.

Why can’t I add tags to an answer to an ask?

[learn-tilde-ath]

How do you use this?

Just to be super clear, though you probably understand this, “drocta ~ath” is not for practical purpose. It is purely an amusement.

That being said, to run this, you need to have python 2 installed. (Yes, currently most new python projects are in python 3. Unfortunately I haven’t gotten around to making any of the updates I’ve wanted to on this project, and it has been years since I’ve worked on it.)

To run it: download the github repository from https://github.com/drocta/TILDE-ATH

then, (probably from the command line, though running it in other ways may also work) navigate into the folder where you put all those files, use python 2 in order to run interp_2.py  . [1] Then, it will allow you to type something in. It would be good if it gave some sort of prompt saying that it is accepting input, but it currently does not. What you have to type in is the file name of the drocta ~ath program that you want to run.

for example, you might type:

python interp_2.py looptest.~ATH

in order to run the program looptest.~ATH , and then you would see the output:that alternates between “APPLE” and “ORANGE” a number of times (like, 5 times I think).

If it isn’t working for you, let me know and I can try and help you troubleshoot what’s going on.

If you are asking, not “how do I run the programs in this language” but “how do I write programs in this language”, uh, read through the rest of this blog I guess. It isn’t complete, but the point of this blog was meant to be a tutorial for how the language works. If you have any particular questions about how to do a particular thing in the language, then ask that. But I don’t currently have time to re-do the whole project of this blog and put a tutorial for the language as a whole in one response to an ask.

P.S. I am currently in grad school for math (I made this language while in high school). I haven’t been doing all that much programming lately unfortunately.

([1] What’s that? “interp_2.py” is a weird name for the main file? Indeed it is. Originally I had “interp.py” and then before I started using git I made a new version which I called interp_2.py, and then, for basically no good reason, I kept that name for the file. If I go back to this at all, I suspect that I will change that to just “interp.py” or maybe “main.py” or something. idk.)

[learn-tilde-ath]

Merry Christmas!

[learn-tilde-ath]

I am aware that this will probably not get answered but for what its worth: Is it possible to access the 'variables' generated within the ~ATH code externally? I.e. if I import an alive object would it be possible to use the python code to test if that object is alive or not (and potentially change that)? I have taken a look at the code but am unsure if it is possible or even coded in that manner. Any response is appreciated but I will not mind and understand if this goes unanswered.

Hey,Assuming I understand what you mean by your question:Yes it would be possible to do that with not too much of a change to the code, but no the code wasn’t designed specifically to facilitate that.The way the code is written, the python function “evalScript” takes two arguments, the first of which is the text of the drocta ~ATH code to run, and the second is a drocta ~ATH object to give as input to the script.In this function, there is a python variable called ATHVars which stores a dictionary of variable names as the keys, and the values being the ~ATH object that is currently pointed to by the variable. If you want to have python do something with a ~ATH object that a particular ~ATH variable points to, you could use this dictionary in order to get that object.At the end of the “evalScript” function, it returns the ~ATH object stored in the return_obj variable. This can be set by sayinganyothervariable.DIE(theObjectYouWantToReturn);So, one way that might work to do what you are wanting to do, is in the ~ATH script you want to run, you would first take all the objects you want to check if they are alive at the end of the script, use BIFURCATE or SPLIT .... ah phooey I never actually put split in this version I guess? ok repeated use of BIFURCATE it is then I guess.Anyway, you would use BIFURCATE to get an object which is the combination of all the objects you are interested in, in whatever way you put them together, and then you make it so that that object is the one you return at the end.If you have one of the ~ATH objects in python, the way to check if it is alive or not is to check the theobjectinquestion.living attribute (see bif.py for this part if you want).

You said “if I import an alive object“, which I’m not sure if might suggest that I haven’t explained how the “import” statement works in this clearly enough.

“import” is a bit of a misnomer here. For the most part, “import” is more of a way to declare new objects, not to import existing objects from a libraryIf I set aside a bunch of time to work on this more I would maybe add support for them actually being libraries?---Oh! If you want the python code to inspect (and possibly change) whether the object that a variable currently points to is alive or not while in the middle of the ~ATH script , a good way to do that would probably be to modify the part which it handles calling functions, and make it support calling functions which are written in python and included in a dictionary under some name, similar to how it uses the funCodes dictionary.

However, that might be kind of tricky to do if you uh, weren’t the one to write the code, because the code I wrote is rather messy? I started cleaning it up at one point by starting to write a parser instead of using the terrible regex that it currently uses, but I never finished writing the parser and integrating it into the interpreter. Bler...

I would like to do that at some point. Hmm...

Maybe I should schedule some time to do that? I have had more experience writing parsers and interpreters since then, so it shouldn’t be /that/ hard for me to clean some of this stuff up and add support for functions written in python.

I probably shouldn’t try working on that like, right now, because I have schoolwork I should be getting to, but, hm.

Hey, if you can, could you send me another ask in a few days to remind me to maybe schedule a day on which to write some stuff for this?

Anyway, thanks for asking. I’m happy to answer questions about this.

[learn-tilde-ath]

So, I just found this and have no clue what's going on. Could you maybe make, like, a simple guide to programming ~ATH? I understand how your python works, but not how to program ~ATH.

Hi!That is sort of what this blog was meant to be.I was trying to explain how to write programs in it, starting with “how do I represent numbers in it?” but then I started prioritizing other projects.I do want to get back to this one though.Perhaps I can give a brief summary in this ask response, and you can tell me what parts you would like clarification on? I will attempt that. I would appreciate it if you tell me what parts of this explanation you are unclear on, or say more about what you don’t understand about how to use drocta ~ATH.

(drocta ~ATH, as a reminder, is my interpretation of how ~ATH could work, which attempts to stay as true to the comic as it can, while still being turing complete, and also possible to implement in reality)In drocta ~ATH there are things called objects. Every object (except for possibly one depending on the specific version of the interpreter, but that isn’t an important detail.) is initially alive. Once an object dies, it cannot be made alive again.Every object has a left half, and a right half, which are both objects. Just because an object is dead does not mean that its left or right halves are dead. Similarly, just because both an object’s left and right halves are dead does not mean that the object is dead.

Also, for any two objects (possibly the same object), there is an object such that the left half of it is the first object, and the right half of it is the second object.

(skippable sidenote : Yes, this would mean that there are infinitely many objects, but they are only /really/ created by the interpreter when they become relevant, so really there are only ever finitely many that the computer is keeping track of)

A variable, in drocta ~ATH, refers to an object. However, it often does not always refer to the same object at different points during the program.

For example, suppose you want some variable to refer to a number which changes during the program. The way that the number which the variable refers to changes is by changing what object the variable refers to.

There are two ways to change what object a variable refers to.

1:Suppose you have three variables names VAR1, VAR2, VAR3.BIFURCATE VAR1[VAR2,VAR3];will take the left half of the object that VAR1 points to, and make VAR2 point to it, instead of whatever it was pointing to before, if anything, and it takes the right half, and makes VAR3 point to it instead of whatever it was pointing to before, if anything.

2:Again, with three variables VAR1, VAR2, VAR3:BIFURCATE [VAR1,VAR2]VAR3;will take the object pointed to by VAR1, and the object pointed to by VAR2, and finds the object such that the left half is the first one, and the right half is the second one, and makes VAR3 point to this object.

Also, when you initially declare an variable it makes a new object for it.

Now, in order to make an object dead, you take a variable (named, say, examplevariable) which currently points to it, and put examplevariable.DIE();and then the object will be dead. Note that this does not make examplevariable point to a different object, which is the same as the one it pointed to before except for being dead. This actually changes the object.In fact, this is the only operation that actually changes an object.

loops:How do you do control flow with this?Well, you use ~ATH loops.

A ~ATH loop looks like this:

~ATH(SOMEVARIABLENAME){//SOME CODE GOES HERE}

What this will do, is it will check if the object currently pointed to by SOMEVARIABLENAME is dead, and if it is not, it runs the code which is {between the curly brackets}. Then, it checks again if the object currently pointed to by SOMEVARIABLENAME is dead, and if not, runs the code inside again. This keeps on repeating until a time that it checks if SOMEVARIABLENAME currently points to an object which is dead, and it is, at which point the program keeps running after the curly brackets.

Note that which object the variable name points to may be changed by the code inside the curly brackets, and probably will be. Changing which object the variable is pointing to is the main way to make the loop exit.

speaking of, let’s get to numbers:

drocta ~ATH doesn’t have numbers as a built in thing. You have to make up your own numbers. But there is a sort of standard way to do so. Where by “standard” I mean, “it is the way that makes the most sense / is the most obvious, and is the way I usually do it”

if some object is the positive integer n, then an object x which has n as the right half, and some object which is alive as the left half, then that object x is n+1 .1 is an object where the left half is a dead object, and the right half is anything.

The reason for this is because this way you can make loops which do things n times, for n>0.

say the object representing n is pointed to by VAR1 , and VAR2 doesn’t point to anything you care about, but it does point to something which is alive, and VAR3 points to an object which represents 1, but you aren’t using it for anything else. You can make a loop like this:

~ATH(VAR2){BIFURCATE VAR1[VAR2,VAR1]; //decrease VAR1 by 1BIFURCATE [VAR2,VAR3]VAR3; /* increase VAR3 by 1, except if this is the last time through the loop, in which case this makes a small error, but one which will be fixed later *///put the stuff you want in the loop here.//Don’t do things to VAR1, VAR2, or VAR3 that you don’t undo though. 

}BIFURCATE VAR3[JUNK,VAR3]; //removes the extra thing that was added to VAR3.

The result of this is that it will do the code you put in the middle n times, and that VAR3 will still store the number n afterwards.

Following processes like these, it is possible to do basically anything you could with a “counter machine / minsky machine” .

Fortunately, there are also things which make things a bit more convenient than using a minsky machine.

In much the same way that you can create numbers, you can also make lists.Just put the successive entries in the list as left halfs of objects, and have the right halves be the list as made so far. (so, basically, the left half is the first element, and the right half is the rest).A caveat here is to make sure that the left half is never a dead object, because that can make it so that the end of the list is detected pre-maturely. However, you might at some point (if you write a lot of drocta ~ATH, which, I am not certain why you would, haha) find that useful to cut the remaining part of a list off.

Of course, when I say to put something as the left half or right half of an object, feel free to switch that in each case. It doesn’t matter as long as you are consistent.

oh, I left out the parts about how to do input and output .

there are some example files on the github for you to check out which have that?

Please let me know if you have any further questions. I’m not sure which parts of this need clarification, so if part of it is unclear, you would be doing me and any other readers of my blog a favor by asking me to clarify them, so please do not hesitate to ask me to clarify any specific part, or to ask me any other question about ~ATH.

Thank you for your interest,

~drocta / ~hE 

[learn-tilde-ath]

How exactly would one go about downloading and running your ~ATH interpretation? Where can we download it and what is needed to run it?

“Hi! My interpreter is on my github account [here], along with a number of example files.

To run it, you need to have python 2.7 installed. (Other versions of python 2 may also work. I don’t think it quite works in python 3, but running it through a python 2 to python3 converter should probably give you a working python 3 version)

You can get python 2 at https://www.python.org/downloads/ .

The current version of python 2 is 2.7.13 . Currently that python download page has a link directly to the download on it. (If anyone is reading this post much later than January 1 2016 and the page has changed in the meantime, feel free to send me an ask asking where the current download link for python 2 is).

Once you have python 2 installed, download the interpreter from my github, https://github.com/drocta/TILDE-ATH . There should be a green button labeled “Clone or download”. If you click this, one of the options it will give will be “download ZIP” . Choose this option to download a .zip file of all the files for drocta ~ATH.

Unzip these files into a folder somewhere. Put the .~ATH files that you want to run in the same folder. Use python2 to run the python file interp_2.py . The program will then expect you to type in the filename of the .~ATH file you want to run and then press enter once. It will then load and run the ~ATH program. When it has finished running the program, it will say "press enter to close" . (this is so you can see the output of your ~ATH program before it closes, in case you run it in certain ways.). When you press enter, the python program will finish.

More details on how to run interp_2.py, in case you don’t know how to:(I am assuming you are on windows. if this is not the case, please send me another ask. It should work fine on other OSs, but these instructions for how to run interp_2.py with python might be slightly different)once python 2 is installed, if you open the command line, navigate to the folder with interp_2.py, and type “python interp_2.py” (without spaces), it should run it. Alternatively you can double click on the interp_2.py, it will probably work.One potential problem you might have is if you have python3 installed as well as python2. In this case you have to make sure you run it with the right version of python. If you are using the command line,“C:\Python27\python.exe interp_2.py” instead of “python interp_2.py” should probably work.

If any of this is unclear or you want any more help with this, please do not hesitate to send another ask.

I’m very pleased that this is still interesting for people, and am happy to help!

[learn-tilde-ath]

This blog still exists

Hi, I haven’t posted much here in quite some time.

So, is this blog abandoned? I wouldn’t say so. I intend to post more ~ATH content here at some point. I have other projects and obligations, which is why I’ve been not doing as much with it recently (”recently”: understatement of the year), but if anyone has any questions about drocta ~ATH, or would like to request that I do something in particular with it, I think I’ll probably respond within a reasonable amount of time.

Right now though I thought I would link to two blogs that I think you are likely to appreciate if you like this blog.

The first is @sbahjsic http://sbahjsic.tumblr.com/ which is for a programming language and assorted connected software meant to be, well, sbahjsic . like sweet bro and h---- jeff. (Warning though, that blog has some javascript alerts when you view it. Also it has moving parts which might be bad if you get nauseous easily or something? idk.) The blog theme there is a work of art to behold. This is likely to appeal because it is also a homestuck related programming language, and also it is great.

The second is @tilde-he which is where I post most of my non ~ATH related tumblr posts. This is somewhat likely to maybe appeal because it is by the same person as this blog (me).

Again, if you have any questions or comments about my version of ~ATH, or, really, any version that you can point out, feel free to send them, and I’ll try to respond within a reasonable amount of time.

Alright, cheers

[learn-tilde-ath]

Do you know of any ~ATH implementations or dialects besides yours and mine?

Actually, yes kinda. Sorta anyway. There is a compiler of sorts that is intended to be ~ATH based, though I don't think it matched canon all that well.

It did have one feature which I found interesting though. It had a command which would create a variable thing which was truthy iff there was a process currently running with a given name, so you could have in a ~ATH loop something that loops until another program is closed. It was a pretty cool feature, but the syntax for it was odd. The author misinterpreted the panel where Sollux deletes the different virus folders he had, so the command was called rm -rf or something like that.

It also had a command to run an executable (by file name) iirc.(which allowed for easy implementation of the robin hood and friar tuck programs)

It also was an editor of sorts, but it had a small window that I don't think was resizeable. It worked (iirc) by doing some string replacement to turn the program into a c(++?) program, which it then compiled.

I'll try to find it  so I can link it. I don't think it represents ~ATH all that accurately, but the using another program as one of the objects seemed like a neat and probably accurate feature (given the mobius double reacharound)

tl;dr yes

[learn-tilde-ath]

re: "computationalalchemist answered: You could use Prolog-style lists for split."

"computationalalchemist answered: You could use Prolog-style lists for split."

I'm not totally sure what you mean, but my best guess as to what you meant is probably pretty similar to how I making it.

I implemented it and I think it works, I need to double check though.

With what I have now when I use 

split [THIS,THIS,THIS,THIS,THIS,THIS,NULL]COUNTER; ~ATH(COUNTER){ print "bananas"; BIFURCATE COUNTER[JUNK,COUNTER]; }EXECUTE(print "ok";); print "whee!";

it yields 

bananas bananas bananas bananas bananas bananas ok whee!

Which seems to make sense to me, and also, fits with how lisp lists work, and apparently also prolog lists.

also where it says split it will also accept bifurcate. they are actually treated as the same command.

import statements aren't fully implemented yet though.

I think I will put this version on github pretty soon.

Thank you for the advice.

[learn-tilde-ath]

Hello again all!

So recently I started kind of working on this again for a bit. I have fixed some bugs with the parser that I haven't pushed yet. I am also writing an improved interpreter that will use the parser instead of the hacky thing that just goes through strings.

However, for the time being, even after I release this version, I would recommend maybe using the older version for a while if anyone is using it, because this version is probably even more buggy.

However, you know how a few posts ago (but more than a year ago (wow) ) I posted that post where I said that I didn't think bifurcate can be used to split values into more than 2 values?

Well I still kind of think that, but on the map page for homestuck on act 6, it says split Act_6[Act_1,Act_2,Act_3,<etc>];

So this is something I intend to implement, and something I am implementing.

And like I said before I would like it to be done with repeated bifurcation, as a sort of syntactic sugar.

And I am thinking I want it to be like

[a,b,c] means the same thing as [a,[b,c]]

so split Z[A,B,C];

would be the same as

BIFURCATE Z[A,BCTEMP]; BIFURCATE BCTEMP[B,C];

and that split [A,B,C]Z;

would be the same as

BIFURCATE [B,C]BCTEMP; BIFURCATE [A,BCTEMP]Z;

But the way the splits would be done could also be backwards

so [a,b,c] could be the same as [[a,b],c]

I'm pretty sure I prefer the first way, but the second way is actually easier to implement.

or at least cleaner looking to implement.

Why doesn't my code look clean ever?

Anyway, my reason for this post is this:

Does anyone have any opinions about how split is implemented?

[learn-tilde-ath]

Learn ~ATH turned 1 today!

yaaaay!

So I think that my explanations of things hasn't been very clear so far, and while I can't promise that they will improve, I do intend to teach programming in person at my school, which might help me to know how to make this tutorial better. Maybe, maybe not. 

May things go well!

[learn-tilde-ath]

I made a parser

I made a parser for ~ATH in addition to the interpreter. I might make the interpreter use the parser at some point in the future, or I might not. If I made the interpreter use the parser, the code for the interpreter would probably be a little cleaner, and possibly a little faster.

The parser is available from my github.

To use it, call tokenize on the text, and then read_all_from on the result of tokenize.

The output will be a list of lists

https://github.com/drocta/TILDE-ATH-Parser

(haven't updated lately because of other unrelated projects, and also other reasons that aren't necessary to describe)