[FWP] JAPH gone mad...

[John Carter <john@dwaf-hri.pwv.gov.za>]

Greetings,

The recent Shuffling thread and also the obfusticated perl contest
caused some of my neurons to misfire along these paths...

1. Self replicating programs have long been a subject of fun.

2. Encoding information in the whitespace of a self analysing program
   is another, not uncommon, fun way of producing JAPH's.

My idea is the following. To write a program to build another program
called A.

Program A is a random number generator that has a special
trajectory. Program A must read itself as its "seed" number, produce
a couple of million other random numbers, computing a 32 bit checksum
on each random number and halting and "eval"ing the first "random"
number whose checksum matches a certain value. 

The "eval'd" random number should be a simple perl program to print
out JAPH and die.

The concept is simple. The information representing the JAPH program
becomes encoded and spread over three different coneptual levels...
  a) The actual bits (white space, constants, etc) of program A.
  b) A pseudo random number generator algorithm.
  c) A 32 bit checksum.

Now I have the concept, I just need an algorithm for producing a
random number generator that has two special numbers on its
trajectory. My intuition tells me someone somewhere would have
designed something like that sometime. I mean this is damn close to
cryptography.

Of course having done this first level, one can "meta" to as many
levels as you want by encrypting the program that designs program A in
the same way....


John Carter                    EMail: ece@dwaf-hri.pwv.gov.za
Telephone : 27-12-808-0374x194 Fax:- 27-12-808-0338
<http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/5947> or <http://iwqs.pwv.gov.za>

When I grow up, I'm going to be a range of mountains!


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