linusakesson.net

Vim code

More obfuscated programming

VI VI VI - Editor of the beast.

Vim can be programmed, just like emacs can. But I'm not talking about the fancy-schmancy .vimrc-style scripting. I'm talking about copying parts of the buffer into registers, and then executing the contents of those registers as if they were macros.

If you don't think it's insane yet, wait till you see the source code:

Note: If you have configured vim to use alternate keyboard mappings, these programs won't work. If this is the case, start vim with the standard mapping, i.e. "vim -u NONE mandelbrot".

So now I'll leave it to someone else to implement an ELisp interpreter. =)

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Anonymous
Fri 25-Sep-2009 21:29
You must have a lot of time on your hands. Fun snippets though, must've been a blast to get working. ;)
Anonymous
Tue 19-Jan-2010 01:18
You really should get out more often.
By the way, I am having fun looking at some of the crazy stuff you are doing
Anonymous
Mon 14-Feb-2011 20:24
Hanoi works, but mandelbrot just keeps writing strange stuff to my console.
Anonymous
Tue 15-Feb-2011 19:19
That's purely insane O_o
If only there was an iovvv (think of ioccc), maybe it's time to setup the chalenge.

I didn't realise at first it was drawing the set but it was on my 170MHz dear host. switching to a 3GHz pc helps rendering it faster :p

congrats anyway
Anonymous
Tue 17-May-2011 21:24
Unbelievable! Congrats for such a genius insight!

Beco.
Anonymous
Wed 20-Jul-2011 12:54
Very well done!
Anonymous
Fri 19-Aug-2011 10:17
You really should get out more often.
He is just extraordinarily intelligent ;) Great work.
Anonymous
Sat 14-Sep-2013 03:33
Oh god, you just ruined my favorite editor. Well done!
Anonymous
Tue 3-Feb-2015 20:39
I'm just fascinated with how clever these are. I discovered them about a year or so ago, and find myself coming back every few months to play with them again.

Bravo!
Anonymous
Mon 2-Oct-2017 09:32
I feel quite stupid but I can't get these to work. If I open them as regular files and type GY@ I see an @ in the statusline but nothing else happens. If I for example press Enter I get told that '^M' is an invalid register name.

*Hides in embarassment*
lft
Linus Åkesson
Mon 2-Oct-2017 09:35
You need to type the double-quote character as well.
Anonymous
Sun 7-Jan-2018 08:07
These are amazing, especially the mandelbrot renderer.
Anonymous
Sat 12-Jan-2019 20:24
Absolutely amazing!
Anonymous
Sat 19-Jan-2019 15:28
Eh ... I thought you were talking about CPU registers :/

Nothing to see here ... :)
Anonymous
Tue 12-Mar-2024 16:00
This is extremly amazing, am a newbie into vim/nvim and i really like your work, thanks so much for the inspiration.
Anonymous
Tue 27-May-2025 17:53
You really should get out more often.
He is just extraordinarily intelligent ;) Great work.

He certainly is, though this is just a subjective statement. More objective would be his IQ or, even better, how many sigmas above the mean he is. See t3x.org for more information on how truly smart people suffer in the world (text is t3x.org/files/gap.pdf) Also has an article as PDF published in Triple Nine Societies vidya mag about two people -- one man, one woman -- suffering from having a three+ sigma IQ, thinking about suicide on a regular basis. Nothing against this fellow -- it's just that our world is now at the point where every invention just makes the world uglier and more vulgar. We live because we were born, I would end my life were I not a Christian. (See also Vox Day's work, who is a Christian with a 150 IQ, as well as Chris Langan's work, who has an IQ of around 210 [sic]). Not sure what IQ hack.org/mc -- another Swede -- has, but he is not that much of a reader, instead busy tweaking his emacs).