This one might make a good console screensaver. It's a Mandelbrot explorer! It rotates, zooms in & out, and scrolls randomly to examine regions of the Mandelbrot set it deems "interesting." Points that escape more quickly are also represented by darker (or lighter, if you've got a dark on light console color scheme) characters. It looks pretty nice from a few feet back. For speed, the fractal iterations aren't very high, so detail falls off as we zoom in.
You can also control the size of the display with the $r and $c values at the beginning, but keep in mind this is quite a CPU hog even at 80x25! I've only tested it on Linux, but I've tried to write it so it works in Windows as well (clearing the screen with "cls").
#!/usr/bin/perl
$r=25; $c=80;
$xr=6;$yr=3;$xc=-0.5;$dw=$z=-4/
100;local$";while($q=$dr=rand()
/7){$w+=$dw;$_=join$/,map{$Y=$_*
$yr/$r;
join"" ,map{$ x=$_*$
xr/$c;($ x,$y)= ($xc+$x
*cos($ w)-$Y* sin$w,$yc+
$x*sin ($w)+$Y*cos
$w);$ e=-1;$ a=$b=0
;($a,$b) =($u-$v+$x,2*$a* $b+$y) while(
$ u=$a*$ a)+($v=$b*$b)<4.5 &&++$e <15;if (($e>$
q&&$e< 15)||($e==$q and rand() <$dr)) {$q=$e;($d0,$d1) =($x,$
y); } chr(+( 32,96,+ 46,45,43,58,73,37 ,36,64
,32)[$ e/1.5] );}(-$ c/2)..($c/2)-1;} (-$r/2
)..($ r/2)-1;select$", $",$", 0.015; system
$^O=~m ~[wW]in~x?"cls": "clear";print ;$xc=(
$d0+15 *$xc)/16;$yc=($ d1+15*$yc)/ 16;$_*=
1+$z for $xr,$yr;$dw *=-1 if rand
()<0.02; (++$i%110 )||($z*=-1)}
Update: I put it in pre tags since it's wider than the default code wrap setting. It's 77 chars wide. Oops, and then I fixed the broken ['s ;) .. Ok, and then I also put it in code tags in a comment, so the "download code" link would work too.
-
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.