NBFC(1) Chaos Contributed Software NBFC(1)NAMEnbfc-- The new brainfuck compiler
SYNOPSISnbfc [options] file
DESCRIPTIONnbfc is a new, completely portable compiler for the brainfuck
programming language. It will generate and compile C code or as an
option a Java application.
nbfc is quite different from the original brainfuck compiler by the
language's inventor Urban Mueller:
- It's portable. The original bfc was for the Amiga only. nbfc should
run on any unix-like system.
- It uses standard tools for its implementation and doesn't try to
obfuscate the code.
- It can compile to C and supports the ''write once, run anywhere''
concept with its capability to generate Java applications.
OPTIONS-o file
Generate an executable by the name of file. If the -j switch is
given, this will be the name of the Java Class generated.
-k Keep generated intermediate code (C or Java). The default is to
delete the .c or .java file that was generated by the compiler and
just keep the executable or the .class file, respectively.
-j Generate and compile a Java class instead of a C executable. The
default is to use C as an intermediate language.
-v Be verbose. By invoking this switch, nbfc will print out lots of
messages about the state of compilation.
-g Don't compile, just generate intermediate file (C or Java). This
can be used for debugging. This also tells the compiler no to
delete the generated intermediate file, as if the -k option was
given.
-c Display the copying license. The license is BSD-style and very
liberal.
-h Display a short help screen.
INVOCATION
When called without any options, nbfc will translate the brainfuck file
given on the command line to C and call a C compiler to produce an
executable.
The executable will have the name bf.out (this can be changed with the
-o option). The intermediate C file always has the name bf.out.c and
will be deleted if the -k option is not present.
When using Java as the intermediate language, the default name for the
application is bf.out.class, the default name for the Java file is
bf.out.java. Both the class name and the intermediate Java code file
name can be changed with the -o option.
THE LANGUAGE
brainfuck is a simple enough language to include the entire official
language describtion in this man page. The following is from the
original brainfuck distribution by Urban Mueller
<umueller@amiga.physik.unizh.ch>, who also invented the language:
''The language brainfuck knows the following commands:
Cmd Effect Equivalent in C
------------------------
+ Increases element under pointer array[p]++;
- Decrases element under pointer array[p]--;
> Increases pointer p++;
< Decreases pointer p--;
[ Starts loop, counter under pointer while(array[p]) {
] Indicates end of loop }
. Outputs ASCII code under pointer putchar(array[p]);
, Reads char and stores ASCII under ptr array[p]=getchar();
All other characters are ignored. The 30000 array elements and p are
being initialized to zero at the beginning. Now while this seems to be
a pretty useless language, it can be proven that it can compute every
solvable mathematical problem (if we ignore the array size limit and
the executable size limit).''
BUGS
There is no checking for balanced brackets; if these are not balanced,
strange things may happen. The compiler doesn�t optimize. There really
should be a backend that generates assembly language code (at least for
Intel and PowerPC machines) instead of only C and Java.
AUTHOR
Jens Ohlig <jo@koeln.ccc.de>
3rd Berkeley DistributionNBFC(1)
