These two JAPHs draw worms on the screen, like the worms program under Unix. But with a Perlish twist, of course! Both JAPHs use console escapes to do the animation, so they may not work on all platforms.

First I wrote a JAPH to draw a single worm crawling around the screen:

@D=(0,0,-1,$|=print"\e[H\e[J");$x=30;$y=10;{select$,,$,,$,,.07;$p=($j
 %=@j=',rekcah lreP rehtona tsuJ'=~/./g)==$M{"@{*t=shift@w}"}&&"\e[H".
  "\e[B"x$t[0]."\e[C"x$t[1].$"if@j<=push@w,[$y,$x];{$D+=$D[rand@D];$_=
+(
   A,D,B,C)[$D%=4];/A/&&$y?$y--:/D/&&$x?--$x:/B/&$y<20?$y++:/C/&$x<60?
+++
    $x:redo}print$p,"\e[H","\e[B"x$y,"\e[C"x$x,$j[$M{"$y $x"}=$j++];re
+do}
[download]

I had fun with that, but I still felt something was lacking... so I wrote a new JAPH to draw any number of crawling worms! With this JAPH, you can specify the number of worms on the command line, like `perl worms 4`:

@T=(0,0,-1,$|=print"\e[H\e[J");@w=[([10,30])x($n=0+pop||3)];{select$,,
+$,,$,,
 .07;my@W;$j%=@j=',rekcah lreP rehtona tsuJ'=~/./g;for$i(0..$n-1){($y,
+$x)=@{$
  w[-1][$i]};{$D[$i]+=$T[rand@T];$_=(A,D,B,C)[$D[$i]%=4];/A/&&$y?--$y:
+/D/&&$x?
  $x--:/B/&$y<20?++$y:/C/&$x<60?$x++:redo}($Y,$X)=@{$w[0][$i]},$p="$j.
+$i"eq$M{
 $Y,$X}&&"\e[H"."\e[B"x$Y."\e[C"x$X.$"if@j<=@w;push@W,[$y,$x];print$p,
+"\e[H",
"\e[B"x$y,"\e[C"x$x,$j[$M{$y,$x}="$j.$i"]}shift@w if@j<push@w,\@W;++$j
+;redo}
[download]

Enjoy!

---

---

• Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
• Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:

  <code> <a> <b> <big> <blockquote> <br /> <dd> <dl> <dt> <em> <font> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr /> <i> <li> <nbsp> <ol> <p> <small> <strike> <strong> <sub> <sup> <table> <td> <th> <tr> <tt> <u> <ul>

• Snippets of code should be wrapped in <code> tags not <pre> tags. In fact, <pre> tags should generally be avoided. If they must be used, extreme care should be taken to ensure that their contents do not have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor intervention).
• Want more info? How to link or How to display code and escape characters are good places to start.