[Edu-sig] Another idea of Conway

[Gregor Lingl]

Although my posting to this list seems to tend to become
a somewhat autistic activity I'd like to reveal the 'mystery'
behind the script below:

http://esolangs.org/wiki/Fractran
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FRACTRAN

Would writing a fractran interpreter in python be an interesting
project for teaching CS? (My first try below allows for a lot of
optimizations, e.g. not to use Fraction but resort to (long) ints.)

Best wishes,
Gregor

Gregor Lingl schrieb:
> Hi all,
>
> on vacation in the Tyrolean Alps one evening
> I've found the time to implement another (I assume
> less well known) idea of John Conway.
>
> Just for fun.
>
> from fractions import Fraction
>
> fracs = [Fraction(f) for f in
>  "17/91 78/85 19/51 23/38 29/33 77/29 95/23 77/19 1/17 11/13 13/11 
> 15/14 15/2 55/1".split()]
>
> def fracgame():
>    z = Fraction(2,1)
>    while True:
>        for f in fracs:
>            n = z * f
>            if n.denominator == 1:
>                break
>        yield int(n)
>        z = n
>
> def pow2(z):
>    n = 0
>    while z % 2 == 0:
>        n += 1
>        z //= 2
>    return (z == 1) * n
>   def what():
>    fg = fracgame()
>    while True:
>        z = next(fg)
>        n = pow2(z)
>        if n != 0:
>            yield n
>
> what = what()
> print(next(what))
> print(next(what))
>
> # the following will take 1 or 2 minutes
>
> ##w = 0 ##while w < 100:
> ##    w = next(what)
> ##    print(w)
>
> Comments or discussion may follow when
> I'm back to Vienna.
>
> All the best,
> Gregor
>
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