Remarks: One-Liners

From Maze

One-liners such as 10Print are curt, minimal BASIC programs written to illustrate, imitate, or express an idea. Due to their brevity, they must often exploit resources which exist in the underlying platform. For example, 10Print relies on graphical images called PETSCII contained in the ROMs of the Commodore computers. The single line of code itself contains no data pertaining to the curvature or pixels comprising the / and \ images, it merely uses the numbers 205.5 and .5 to refer to characters number 205 and 206. Therefore 10Print relies on the existence block graphics sets.

Block graphics sets - including the non-typographic / and \ symbols used in 10Print - have collectively produced a vocabulary capable of representing emotions, stick-figures, balance sheets, graphical window systems. In one-liners, sometimes symbols are interpreted as the subject of the story. For example, in this variation on 10Print, one of the slanted symbols represents an icicle.

• Icicle Storm

10 poke 1024+rnd(0)*1000,78: goto 10

In addition to relying upon the existence of the graphics in operating system, this one-liner also relies on the default colors of the BASIC environemnt to be light blue on dark blue:

The impression of movement and space-filling are inherent features of the platform. Specifically, the slow, ruthless instantiation of symbolic icicles mimics the dynamics of a mounting storm because the computer can not draw them fast enough to fill the screen instantly. The unpredictable nature of the random number generator sufficiently represents the natural movement of precipitation that with a slightly hint in the title, the image is ready to be interpreted. Although the one-line simulation represents the accumulating energy of a storm well, it will never, like a real storm, die out and warm up. After completely filling the screen, the action ceases, so the one-liner can only tell one part of a story.

Commodore 64 users have experienced so many different system crashes that they can be aesthetically categorized. For example, the following one-liner pr

• Snowcrash - do not use on real Commodore 64

10 poke 53248+24,timeand255: goto 10

Also, this one-liner imitates a particular set of crashes, those involving complex writes to the video hardware, which took place often.

• Crashes I Have Known and Loved.

10 poke 53248+17,(time/10)and255: goto 10

These one-liners make good use of the print and poke commands. We know that PRINT was inherited from the earliest Dartmouth BASIC implementation. Did Bill Gates invent the POKE command?

Others depend upon non-standard, yet still legal behavior. In the following example, the video chip inside the Commodore 64 is modulated as fast as BASIC can go - which for this short loop is rather fast.

• Windy Day in Chicago

10 poke 53248+22,(time/10)and255: goto 10

• Random SID Tones

10 poke 54272 + rnd(1)*25,rnd(1)*256:goto 10

• Alphabet on screen

10 poke 1024 + rnd(1)*1000,64+rnd(1)*26: goto 10

• Crazy VIC-II

10 poke 53248+rnd(0)*46,rnd(0)*256: goto 10

• Nutty VIC-II

10 poke 53248+24,rnd(0)*256: goto 10

• Everything Random

10 poke 1024+rnd(0)*1000,78

20 poke 53248+24,timeand255

30 poke 53248+17,(time/10)and255

40 poke 53248+22,(time/9)and255

50 poke 54272 + rnd(0)*25,rnd(0)*256

60 poke 1024 + rnd(0)*1000,rnd(0)*256

70 goto 10