Esolang:Featured languages/Current

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…)