Draten

Draten

Paradigm(s)	imperative
Designed by	User:Ttulka
Appeared in	2025
Memory system	Cell-based
Dimensions	two-dimensional
Computational class	Turing complete
Major implementations	Interpreter in JavaScript
File extension(s)	.dr

Draten is a 2D esoteric programming language. Its name is a garble of Drähten (German for "wires").

How it works

It uses 26 unbounded, non-negative integer registers, each referenced by a letter of the English alphabet. Uppercase letters increase the value of the registers, while lowercase letters decrease the value of the registers, unless the register is already zero.

Program execution begins with the instruction to the right of the starting symbol ➧.

By default, execution proceeds to the right.

The program flows through wires made of box-drawing characters: ━, ┃, ┏, ┓, ┗, ┛.

The program can branch using one of the following instructions if the value of the register is zero: ┣, ┫, ┳, ┻.

Wires that are out of reach or other unrecognized symbols are ignored as no-ops.

Instructions

Unicode	Symbol	Instruction
U+27A7	➧	program start
U+2501	━	horizontal flow
U+2503	┃	vertical flow
U+250F	┏	up to right or left to down
U+2513	┓	right to down or up to left
U+2517	┗	down to right or left to up
U+251B	┛	right to up or down to left
U+2523	┣	branching right
U+252B	┫	branching left
U+2533	┳	branching down
U+253B	┻	branching up
	A..Z	increment
	a..z	decrement

Examples

Empty program:

➧

Infinite loop:

➧━━┓
 ┗━┛

Copy A to B:

 ┏━━━┓
➧┳aBC┛c
 a   ┏┻cA┓
 ┗━━━┛┗━━┛

Switch A and B:

 ┏━━┓┏┓  c
➧┳aC┛b┗━━┻cB┓
 a  ┏┻bA┓┗━━┛
 ┗━━┛┗━━┛

Addition (A = A + B):

 ┏━━┓
➧┳bA┛
 b

Multiplication (C = A × B)

 ┏━━━━━━━━━━━┓
 ┃ ┏━━━┓ ┏━━┓┃
➧┳a┳bCD┛┏┳dB┛┃
 a b┏━━━┛d┏━━┛
   ┗┛    ┗┛

Hello World ( => 1, d => 2, e => 3, H => 4, l => 5, o => 6, r => 7, W => 8):

KKJJJJJIIIIIIIHHHHHHGGGGGGGG┓  
   ➧AAAABBBCCCCCDDDDDEEEEEE┓┃    ┏━━┓        ┏F┓
                           ┃┃    ┃┏┓┗┓  ┏┓  ┏┛┏┛
                           ┃┗━━━━┛┃┗┓┗┓┏┛┗┓┏┛┏┛
                           ┃┏━━━━┓┃ ┗┓┗┛┏┓┗┛┏┛
                           ┃┃    ┃┃  ┗┓┏┛┗┓┏┛
                           ┗┛    ┗┛   ┗┛  ┗┛

External resources

• Draten interpreter in JavaScript