WHY — An Esoteric Programming Language

why = 0 | why? = 1 | the language that questions everything

WHY is a Turing-complete esoteric programming language with 8 tokens. It works like Brainfuck — a tape of memory cells and a pointer — but every instruction is an existential question.

Tokens

Token	Brainfuck	Action
why	<	Move pointer left
why?	>	Move pointer right
why;	+	Increment current cell
why!	-	Decrement current cell
Why	.	Output cell as ASCII char
Why?	,	Input one character
Why!	[	Loop start (skip if cell = 0)
WHY	]	Loop end (jump back if cell ≠ 0)

Hello World

why; why; why; why; why; why; why; why; Why! why? why; why; why; why; Why! why? why; why; why? why; why; why; why? why; why; why; why? why; why why why why why! WHY why? why; why? why; why? why! why? why? why; Why! why WHY why why! WHY why? why? Why why? why! why! why! Why why; why; why; why; why; why; why; Why Why why; why; why; Why why? why? Why why why! Why why Why why; why; why; Why why! why! why! why! why! why! Why why! why! why! why! why! why! why! why! Why why? why? why; Why why? why; why; Why

Files

File	Description
why.exe	WHY language interpreter (Windows)
why_lang.c	Interpreter source code (C)
whyc.exe	WHY binary encoder/decoder
whyc_win.c	Encoder source code (C)
hello.why	Hello World in WHY

Usage

why hello.why

Building from source

gcc -O2 -o why why_lang.c
gcc -O2 -o whyc whyc_win.c

The Two Modes of WHY

WHY has two personalities:

1. Esoteric language (why.exe) — write real programs using the 8 tokens above
2. Binary encoder (whyc.exe) — encode ANY file to why/why? binary representation

Translating from Brainfuck

Any Brainfuck program can be converted to WHY by substituting symbols. WHY is Turing complete.

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Created with chaos and zero regret.