Circute

Circute is a cellular automaton (and quite arguably an esoteric programming language) developed by Chris Pressey in 2005 as a test of the wire-crossing problem. It consists of nothing but logical NAND gates connected by wires. It was designed to be implementable in ALPACA.

Syntax

• = - wire. Sparks pass through.
• - - tail, used to make sparks act more like snakes.
• # - spark. These spread across wires.
• N - NAND gate. If there's a free wire directly along the left or the right, send a message along any wire directly above or below.

Examples

Note: those marked with a * must be replaced with either a wire (=) or a spark(#). These just indicate where everything goes.

AND gate

*==     ==*
  =     =
  ===N===
     =
     =
   =====
   =   =
   =#N#=
     =

OR gate

*==     ==*
  =     =
===== =====
=   = =   =
==N== ==N==
  =     =
  ==#N#==
     =
     =

One-fire switch(OSC->OFF)

  ===#N=========
  =     =   =
==N== ===== =
=   = =   = =
===== ==N== =
  =     =   =
  *     =====  

Tiny oscillator

Note: The tails mark the direction.

#N=
 ==---------

Fast oscillator

 =N#
#N=
  =-----

Has a period of three steps.

NOT gate

  *
  =
=====
=   =
==N==
  =
  =

Tiny NOT gate

*
=
=N#
 =
 =

External resources

• Circute project at Cat's Eye Technologies