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Welcome to Esolang, the esoteric programming languages wiki!

This wiki is dedicated to the fostering and documentation of programming languages designed to be unique, difficult to program in, or just plain weird.

Why not join us on IRC?

For readers You'll probably want to find out what on earth an esoteric programming language is in the first place. Then, you might want to explore the complete list of languages, or find something more specific with the categories. You could also visit the joke language list, which lists languages that can't even be programmed in. Failing that, you could take a look at a random language. You could also take a look at the list of special pages.

Featured language Thue is an esoteric programming language based around the idea of a "semi-Thue system": a system which specifies strings that can be rewritten to certain other strings; a program is simply a list of search strings, and possible replacements for them. As a nondeterministic language, a program has the potential to halt if there is some way to reach an end state via applying replacements, even if rules such as "always apply the first replacement" would lead to an infinite loop. No data storage is necessary, apart from a single string that holds the entire state of the running program, although this often causes programs to run slowly due to delays in communicating information from one part of the string to another. (more…) Previously featured: Funciton · Brainfuck · Deadfish · Emmental · more…

For creators If you've just created a language, you can create an article for it by typing its name into the search box, assuming the name is not already taken (If it is taken, instead of overwriting the original page, please move the original page to another title unless it is a redirect, create your esolang in another title (Original title plus a suffix), and change the redirect to a disambiguation page, and change the links to the disambiguation page to one of the two pages. If the original page is too popular, like brainfuck, you should consider renaming your language or creating it in another title), but be sure to take a look at the help guide first. Then you should add it to the language list (or the joke language list, as appropriate). DON'T create pages with the Esolang: prefix for your esolangs because that prefix is for general information about the wiki, but do remember to properly categorize your articles. If you haven't got that far yet, take a look at the list of ideas for inspiration. Otherwise, you could help out with a work in progress.

Meta Learn about this wiki Check out the recent changes View the site policies Download an XML dump of the wiki's content Discuss the wiki on the community portal's talk page Talk with other esolang enthusiasts in the places listed in the community portal

Since April 2005, 6,229 articles have been created by 148,203 edits, including 5,955 esoteric languages. There are 8,520 registered users, although many of them are spambots.

Enjoy being locked in your matrix of solidity.