Looking for old Perl code

mushu999 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Many years ago when the original Linux Journal was still a thing, they ran an annual Obfuscated Perl contest which was, arguably, the best thing in the magazine. In one issue someone created a Perl program to play the game of Go against the computer and they formatted the code to look like a Go board with the starting black and white pieces placed in their starting locations. I have been unable to find that anywhere...apparently my google-fu is just sna-fu. Do any (older) readers happen to have a copy of that or know where I can find it?

Comment on Looking for old Perl code

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Re: Looking for old Perl code by marto (Cardinal) on Mar 23, 2023 at 13:22 UTC
The contest ran from 1996 to 2000. If search engines aren't finding it for you, you may have to examine the archive, note the ISO download.	[reply]
Re: Looking for old Perl code (Linux Journal) by LanX (Saint) on Mar 23, 2023 at 13:27 UTC
does this help? https://archive.org/details/linuxjournalpdfcollection/Linux%20Journal%20complete%20PDF%20collection/Linux_Journal_FAQ/ quote: > Linux Journal died on August 7, 2019, because they ran out of operating funds. I put together this comprehensive collection of all the issues published (1994-2019) in PDFs, as well as a siterip of their main site, as well as a mirror of their FTP server. Cheers Rolf _{(addicted to the 𐍀𐌴𐍂𐌻 Programming Language :) Wikisyntax for the Monastery}	[reply]
Re: Looking for old Perl code by kcott (Archbishop) on Mar 23, 2023 at 13:27 UTC
G'day mushu999, Welcome to the Monastery. There may be someone who can target that article directly; if not, you could try the "Wayback Machine" for "Linux Journal". — Ken	[reply]
Re: Looking for old Perl code by hexcoder (Deacon) on Mar 25, 2023 at 12:04 UTC
Hi mushu999, The O'Reilly book 'Games, Diversions & Perl Culture: Best of the Perl Journal' (ISBN 9780596003128) has a part on Obfuscated Perl, which covers all contests. I did not find any go program there, but you can see for yourself. The TPJ issues seem to be available here: http://www.foo.be/docs/tpj/. EDIT: with code examples being here: http://www.foo.be/docs/tpj/programs/. Here is the link for the tar archive of code examples for the book from O'Reilly: https://resources.oreilly.com/examples/9780596003128/-/blob/master/tpj3-examples.tar. Good luck!	[reply]
Re: Looking for old Perl code by mushu999 (Novice) on Mar 24, 2023 at 16:03 UTC
Thank you all so much! Hopefully those hints will help me. I sure miss those good ol' days...everything was new and exciting... EDIT: UGH...apparently it was "The Perl Journal" and not the Linux Journal. Too many journals...	[reply]
Re: Looking for old Perl code by hv (Prior) on Mar 25, 2023 at 15:15 UTC
Clutching at straws a bit here, could you possibly be thinking of TheDamian's obfuscated perl entry "SelfGOL", which plays (the other) Conway's "Game of Life" on itself? You can see it here for example.	[reply]
Re^2: Looking for old Perl code by mushu999 (Novice) on Mar 25, 2023 at 16:27 UTC
Thanks for posting. No, it was definitely the game of Go as the source code itself was used to draw a checked playing board with the two pieces placed diagonally in the middle and ready for the first move. If you printed out the code it would print a Go board with four pieces on it. And it actually ran and played a good game of Go! I had all of these cool things on old hard drives that all failed and this one stuck in my head is all, it is probably lost to history now...sad. It might have been an entry to the obfuscated Perl contest that was part of the winners due to its code size, thus would only be in the printed magazine.	[reply]

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