Just another Perl hacker

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Just another Perl hacker, or JAPH, typically refers to a Perl program which prints "Just another Perl hacker," (the comma is canonical but is occasionally omitted). Short JAPH programs are often used as signatures in online forums, or as T-shirt designs. The phrase or acronym is also occasionally used (without code) for a signature.

JAPH programs are classically done using extremely obfuscated methods, in the spirit of the Obfuscated C Contest. More recently, as the phenomenon has become so well known, the phrase is sometimes used in ordinary examples (without obfuscation). Even more recently the P of JAPH can also stand for Perl 6, Parrot or Pugs.

The idea of using tiny Perl programs which print a signature as a signature was originated by Randal L. Schwartz, in his postings to the newsgroup comp.lang.perl. ^[1] (In fact, many of the JAPHs below are his.)

1 Examples
2 See also
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Examples

JAPH program without obfuscation:

print "Just another Perl hacker,\n";

Embedding JAPH in opaque code:

$_='987;s/^(d+)/$1-1/e;$1?eval:print"Just another Perl hacker,"';eval;

Decoding JAPH from an encrypted string literal:

$_="krJhruaesrltre c a cnP,ohet";$_.=$1,print$2while s/(..)(.)//;

Appearing as if it does something completely unrelated to printing JAPH:

$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgc";
tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print;

Using only Perl keywords (no literals or punctuation):

 not exp log srand xor s qq qx xor
 s x x length uc ord and print chr
 ord for qw q join use sub tied qx
 xor eval xor print qq q q xor int
 eval lc q m cos and print chr ord
 for qw y abs ne open tied hex exp
 ref y m xor scalar srand print qq
 q q xor int eval lc qq y sqrt cos
 and print chr ord for qw x printf
 each return local x y or print qq
 s s and eval q s undef or oct xor
 time xor ref print chr int ord lc
 foreach qw y hex alarm chdir kill
 exec return y s gt sin sort split

Taken from [1]

Using only punctuation (no alphanumeric characters): (Written by Eric Roode)

`$=`;$_=\%!;($_)=/(.)/;$==++$|;($.,$/,$,,$\,$",$;,$^,$#,$~,$*,$:,@%)=(
$!=~/(.)(.).(.)(.)(.)(.)..(.)(.)(.)..(.)......(.)/,$"),$=++;$.++;$.++;
$_++;$_++;($_,$\,$,)=($~.$"."$;$/$%[$?]$_$\$,$:$%[$?]",$"&$~,$#,);$,++
;$,++;$^|=$";`$_$\$,$/$:$;$~$*$%[$?]$.$~$*${#}$%[$?]$;$\$"$^$~$*.>&$=`

(Attribution is missing.) The above JAPH works only on Unix and unix-like systems.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

This article was originally based on material from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, which is licensed under the GFDL.

^ Randal L. Schwartz in Usenet message M1HFPVH2JQ.FSF@HALFDOME.HOLDIT.COM explaining the origin of JAPH. Available through google: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.perl.misc/msg/ecc405feeefc120c