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Tape and Stack Based Esoteric Languages
A comparison of esoteric languages that use a tape, a stack or a few counters as their only memory, and what each choice makes easy or awkward.
More Esoteric Languages
Tape and Stack Languages
Brainfuck, stack machines and related memory models.
Brainfuck Variants and Dialects
A survey of the kinds of changes found in languages derived from Brainfuck, from cell size and end-of-input behavior to bit cells and extra commands.
Common Brainfuck Programming Patterns
Learn the standard Brainfuck idioms: clearing a cell, moving and copying values, counting loops, and simple multiplication, each with a worked example.
Concatenative Thinking in Odd Languages
How programs built by joining functions end to end on a stack work, why any split of the text is a valid program, and where esoteric languages echo the idea.
Counter Machines and Minsky Style Languages
An explanation of counter machines, languages with only counters, increment, decrement and zero tests, including a worked addition program and what they show.
Memory Models Across Esoteric Languages
Compare tape, stack, queue and grid storage in esoteric languages, and see what kinds of programs each memory layout makes natural or painful.
Ook and Other Brainfuck Reskins
See how renaming Brainfuck's eight commands, as Ook does with its three word forms, makes a new-looking language that is still the same underneath.
Stack Machines Explained Through Esolangs
Learn how a stack machine evaluates expressions by following small esoteric languages step by step, with traced examples in postfix and Befunge style.
Tape Versus Grid as a Memory Model
Contrast one-dimensional tape execution in Brainfuck with an instruction pointer moving over a plane in Befunge, and see where code and data live in each.
Underload and Other Minimal Stack Languages
A look at Underload and other tiny stack languages that treat code as strings to store, duplicate, join and run, with short traced examples.
Writing a Brainfuck Interpreter
Outline of a compact Brainfuck interpreter in Python, including bracket matching with a stack, tape handling, input and output, and basic error checks.
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