From: Jeff Schwab <jeff@...>
Date: 2009-04-25T10:30:06+09:00
Subject: Re: [QUIZ] Digits of Pi (#202)

Joel VanderWerf wrote:
> Daniel Moore wrote:
>> This week's quiz is to write a Ruby program that can compute the first
>> 100,000 digits of �.
> 
> Bonus points for determining the first non-trivial ruby program encoded 
> in that sequence of digits.

Interesting idea!

Is there any way of determining whether a given sequence of bytes is a 
valid ruby program, other than running it?  If this were my paternus 
lingua, C++, I would start by chucking each candidate sequence at a 
compiler.

> (Represent a program source string as a sequence of octal triplets
> that is, or is not, a subsequence of the octal representation of �.)

What is an "octal triplet?"  Do you mean that the integer value of each 
byte in the source code should be represented by a sequence of three 
octal digits (e.g. 077 for ?? and 141 for ?a)?

I'm curious:  Why octal?  It seems an odd choice, given that an "octal 
triplet" corresponds to 9 bits, rather than the 8 in a standard byte. 
Why not "hex pairs?"

Btw, isn't every finite sequence of digits a subsequence of Pi's 
representation in that base?  Or is that unknowable?