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Perl and Perl Accessories

Just for fun.

Horizontal Perl: matrix.pl

I've always thought that code being line-based was a waste of vertical space. With that in mind, here is my new and improved programming language, Horizontal Perl.

Here is the interpreter. Excuse the heretical line-based code.

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my $filename = $ARGV[0];

open my $fh, '<:unix', $filename or die "Couldn't open $filename: $!";

my $code = do { local $/; <$fh> };

close $fh;

my @cols;

foreach my $line (split /\n/, $code) {
    my @chars = split //, $line;

    for (my $i = 0; $i < scalar @chars; $i++) {
        push @{$cols[$i]}, $chars[$i];
    }
}

my $codeblock = '';

foreach my $c (@cols) {
    my $statement = join '', @{$c};

    unless ($statement =~ /^\s+$/) {
        $codeblock .= $statement . "\n";
    }
}

eval $codeblock;

Save it as "matrix.pl" and pass it .matrix files as its only argument, such as the following:

#s    s
 u    a
cb    y
o     (
ms    "
ma    h
ey    e m
n     l y
t{    l
sp    o $ s
 r    " n a
ai    ) a y
rn    ; m (
et      e "
 (    s   w
vs    a = e
eh    y   l
ri    ( < c
tf    " S o
it    w T m
c,    h D e
a"    a I ,
l\    t N
 n      > $
 "    i ; n
 )    s   a
 }        m
      y   e
      o   !
      u   "
      r   )
          ;
      n
      a
      m
      e
      ?
      "
      )
      ;

In order to write your own .matrix scripts, the following tips may be useful:

Trailing whitespace is encouraged
The language is fully compatible with Perl, meaning you can import Perl modules

If you've written your own .matrix script and have suggestions for improvements or want it featured on this page, e-mail me at netsplit@sdf.org.