Hi,

Brian F. Feldman wrote:

> In case anyone wants something else to try an example of how fun
> Ruby syntax can be, what about the results for this one?
>
> !?!?!?::?!??*:?!??!*??:?!

For the benefit of newcomers (and for those of us who haven't had spare time
this week to delve into the documentation), how about an explanation
suitable for inclusion in the Ruby FAQ?

Is there a general/generic "brute force" way of handling all such puzzles,
such as one of the recently mentioned node dumping modules (which I haven't
had a chance to try out yet)? IIRC, there was a web site that allowed you to
enter symbolic integrals that would be fed to Mathematica, and which would
then display the results. Someone might want to create a "Ruby gadgetry" web
page, which among other things could do something similar for analyzing Ruby
"puzzlers". This could include a list of challenge problems (citing their
authors) to try that are (1) notably instructive (e.g. Matz's previous
quiz), (2) notably obscure yet cool-looking (e.g. the above example), or (3)
both.

Conrad