cryptic plain TeX: Twelve days of Christmas

Question

Many years ago, probably in TUGboat, I saw a shortish piece of \TeX\ that immediately deploys catcodes and very quickly becomes completely unreadable, but when typeset produces the old "twelve days of Christmas" ditty (benefitting from recursion due to the repetitive nature of it).

I tried to find it and couldn't. It was cute. Anybody has a clue?

I may have a clue:-) xii.tex on ctan (there are some step by step dissections of it on this site) — David Carlisle, Jan 27 '15 at 11:29
http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/105808/how-could-the-macro-xii-tex-be-simplified-into-a-better-readable-form — Paul Gessler, Jan 27 '15 at 11:31
It's already posted here: http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/219774/showcase-of-programming-your-document-paradigm/219794#219794. The master at work. — Steven B. Segletes, Jan 27 '15 at 13:27

David Carlisle · Accepted Answer · 2015-01-27T13:18:36.520

9

^^5clet~^^5ccatcode~`76~`A13~`F1~`j00~`P2jdefA71F~`7113jdef
PALLFPAXX71F7171P A33FilPA44Fe PA55Fg/PA667172F.7271PA99FaP
A887172F7271P8hT4f348 si 9v939bl4fr8mo  hXt8:pX  /wXw6tc9n6
ro5pk5xXijbye

edited Jan 27 '15 at 13:18

answered Jan 27 '15 at 13:10

David Carlisle

757,742

1

I remember you saying that you wanted the less possible backslashes in the code, why not use ^^-notation? – Manuel Jan 27 '15 at 13:13
@Manuel Sir, you should be ashamed of yourself for even thinking of such a thing. Done:-) – David Carlisle Jan 27 '15 at 13:19
I was serious :P Why didn't you use it with xii.tex? It's a so low and cheap trick that you didn't want it? – Manuel Jan 27 '15 at 13:21
@Manuel it was a long time ago:-) – David Carlisle Jan 27 '15 at 14:00

cryptic plain TeX: Twelve days of Christmas

1 Answers1