Malbolge

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Malbolge is a public domain esoteric programming language invented by Ben Olmstead in 1998, named after the eighth circle of hell in Dante's Inferno, the Malebolge.

The peculiarity of Malbolge is that it was designed to be the worst possible (most difficult and esoteric) programming language. However, several of the tricks used to make understanding it difficult can be simplified away.

Contents 1 Programming in Malbolge 2 Hello, world in Malbolge 3 Simplified workings of Malbolge 3.1 Notes 3.2 Registers 3.3 Pointer notation 3.4 Memory 3.5 Instructions 3.6 Crazy operation 3.7 Encryption 3.7.1 Method 1 3.7.2 Method 2 3.7.3 Cycles in the encryption 4 See also 5 External links

[edit] Programming in Malbolge

Malbolge was so difficult to understand when it arrived that it took two years for the first Malbolge program to appear. The program was not even written by a human being: it was generated by a beam search algorithm designed by Andrew Cooke and implemented in Lisp.

On August 24, 2000, Anthony You has announced on his blog that he "beat Malbolge with a stick and mastered its secrets", providing evidence in the form of three Malbolge programs that print various phrases. He did not, however, reveal his techniques.[1]

Later, Lou Scheffer posted a cryptanalysis of Malbolge and provided a program to copy its input to its output.

Olmstead believed Malbolge to be a linear bounded automaton. There is a more interesting discussion about whether one can implement sensible loops in Malbolge — it was many years before introducing the first non-terminating one.

[edit] Hello, world in Malbolge

This Malbolge program displays "Hello, world."

 (=<`:9876Z4321UT.-Q+*)M'&%$H"!~}|Bzy?=|{z]KwZY44Eq0/{mlk**
 hKs_dG5[m_BA{?-Y;;Vb'rR5431M}/.zHGwEDCBA@98\6543W10/.R,+O< 

[edit] Simplified workings of Malbolge

Malbolge is machine language for a ternary virtual machine, the Malbolge interpreter. To aid in the writing of Malbolge programs that run properly, the way the standard interpreter works will be described below.

[edit] Notes

• The standard interpreter and the official specification do not match perfectly.
• This is a simplified explanation of the interpreter source code: it obviates useless encryption and subtraction steps and introduces an assembly language.

[edit] Registers

Malbolge has three registers, a, c, and d, which are like variables in other languages. When a program starts, the value of all three registers is zero. c is special: it points to the current instruction.

[edit] Pointer notation

d can hold a memory address; [d] is the value stored at that address. [c] is similar.

[edit] Memory

The virtual machine has 59049 (3¹⁰) memory locations that can each hold a ten-digit ternary number. Each memory location has an address from 0 to 59048 and can hold a value from 0 to 59048. Incrementing past this limit wraps back to zero.

Before a Malbolge program starts, the first part of memory is filled with the program. All whitespace in the program is ignored and, to make programming more difficult, everything else in the program must start out as one of the instructions below.

The rest of memory is filled by using the crazy operation (see below) on the previous two addresses ([m] = crz [m - 2], [m - 1]). Memory filled this way will repeat every twelve addresses (the individual ternary digits will repeat every three or four addresses, so a group of ternary digits is guaranteed to repeat every twelve).

[edit] Instructions

Malbolge has eight instructions. Malbolge figures out which instruction to execute by taking the value at [c], adding the value of c to it, and taking the remainder when this is divided by 94. The final result tells the interpreter what to do:

Instructions

Value of ([c] + c) % 94	Instruction represented	Explanation
4	jmp [d] + 1	The value at [d], plus one, is where Malbolge will jump to and start executing instructions.
5	out a	Prints the value of a, as an ASCII character, to the screen.
23	in a	Inputs a character, as an ASCII code, into a. Newlines or line feeds are both code 10. An end-of-file condition is code 59048.
39	rotr [d] mov a, [d]	Rotates the value at [d] by one ternary digit (0002111112 becomes 2000211111). Stores the result both at [d] and in a.
40	mov d, [d]	Copies the value at [d] to d.
62	crz [d], a mov a, [d]	Does the crazy operation (see below) with the value at [d] and the value of a. Stores the result both at [d] and in a.
68	nop	Does nothing.
81	end	Ends the Malbolge program.
Any other value does the same as 68: nothing. These other values are not allowed in a program while it is being loaded, but are allowed afterwards.

After each instruction is executed, the guilty instruction gets encrypted (see below) so that it won't do the same thing next time, unless a jump just happened. Right after a jump, Malbolge will encrypt the innocent instruction just prior to the one it jumped to instead. Then, the values of both c and d are increased by one and the next instruction is executed.

[edit] Crazy operation

For each ternary digit of both inputs, use the following table to get a ternary digit of the result. For example, crz 0001112220, 0120120120 gives 1001022211.

Crazy operation

crz		Input 2
		0	1	2
Input 1	0	1	0	0
	1	1	0	2
	2	2	2	1

[edit] Encryption

After an instruction is executed, the value at [c] (without anything added to it) will be replaced with itself mod 94. Then, the result is encrypted with one of the following two equivalent methods.

[edit] Method 1

Find the result below. Store the ASCII code of the character below it at [c].

0000000000111111111122222222223333333333444444444455555555556666666666777777777788888888889999
0123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
9m<.TVac`uY*MK'X~xDl}REokN:#?G"i@5z]&gqtyfr$(we4{WP)H-Zn,[%\3dL+Q;>U!pJS72FhOA1CB6v^=I_0/8|jsb

[edit] Method 2

Find the result below. Store the encrypted version at [c].

Encryption table

Result	Encrypted	Result	Encrypted	Result	Encrypted	Result	Encrypted	Result	Encrypted
0	57	19	108	38	113	57	91	76	79
1	109	20	125	39	116	58	37	77	65
2	60	21	82	40	121	59	92	78	49
3	46	22	69	41	102	60	51	79	67
4	84	23	111	42	114	61	100	80	66
5	86	24	107	43	36	62	76	81	54
6	97	25	78	44	40	63	43	82	118
7	99	26	58	45	119	64	81	83	94
8	96	27	35	46	101	65	59	84	61
9	117	28	63	47	52	66	62	85	73
10	89	29	71	48	123	67	85	86	95
11	42	30	34	49	87	68	33	87	48
12	77	31	105	50	80	69	112	88	47
13	75	32	64	51	41	70	74	89	56
14	39	33	53	52	72	71	83	90	124
15	88	34	122	53	45	72	55	91	106
16	126	35	93	54	90	73	50	92	115
17	120	36	38	55	110	74	70	93	98
18	68	37	103	56	44	75	104

[edit] Cycles in the encryption

Lou Scheffer's cryptanalysis of Malbolge mentions six different cycles in the encryption. They are listed here:

• 33 ⇒ 53 ⇒ 45 ⇒ 119 ⇒ 78 ⇒ 49 ⇒ 87 ⇒ 48 ⇒ 123 ⇒ 71 ⇒ 83 ⇒ 94 ⇒ 57 ⇒ 91 ⇒ 106 ⇒ 77 ⇒ 65 ⇒ 59 ⇒ 92 ⇒ 115 ⇒ 82 ⇒ 118 ⇒ 107 ⇒ 75 ⇒ 104 ⇒ 89 ⇒ 56 ⇒ 44 ⇒ 40 ⇒ 121 ⇒ 35 ⇒ 93 ⇒ 98 ⇒ 84 ⇒ 61 ⇒ 100 ⇒ 97 ⇒ 46 ⇒ 101 ⇒ 99 ⇒ 86 ⇒ 95 ⇒ 109 ⇒ 88 ⇒ 47 ⇒ 52 ⇒ 72 ⇒ 55 ⇒ 110 ⇒ 126 ⇒ 64 ⇒ 81 ⇒ 54 ⇒ 90 ⇒ 124 ⇒ 34 ⇒ 122 ⇒ 63 ⇒ 43 ⇒ 36 ⇒ 38 ⇒ 113 ⇒ 108 ⇒ 39 ⇒ 116 ⇒ 69 ⇒ 112 ⇒ 68 ⇒ 33 ...
• 37 ⇒ 103 ⇒ 117 ⇒ 111 ⇒ 120 ⇒ 58 ⇒ 37 ...
• 41 ⇒ 102 ⇒ 96 ⇒ 60 ⇒ 51 ⇒ 41 ...
• 42 ⇒ 114 ⇒ 125 ⇒ 105 ⇒ 42 ...
• 50 ⇒ 80 ⇒ 66 ⇒ 62 ⇒ 76 ⇒ 79 ⇒ 67 ⇒ 85 ⇒ 73 ⇒ 50 ...
• 70 ⇒ 74 ⇒ 70 ...

These cycles can be used to create loops that do different things each time and that eventually become repetitive. Lou Scheffer used this idea to create a Malbolge program (included in his cryptanalysis linked below) that repeats anything the user inputs.

[edit] See also

• INTERCAL
• Obfuscated code

[edit] External links

• Malbolge language specification
• Malbolge interpreter (C source code)
• Description of Andrew Cooke's algorithm for creating the first Malbolge program
• Lou Scheffer's cryptanalysis of Malbolge
• Treatise on writing Malbolge programs; takes Scheffer's analysis a bit further
• Anthony Youhas' blog announcement
• "99 bottles" in Malbolge (real loop version)