Palindromic Palindrome Checking
Stan Kelly-Bootle's column in the April 2007 ACM Queue, titled Ode or Code? — Programmers Be Mused!, was as always very enjoyable. However, I found its ending, a C function that returns true when given a palindromic string (e.g. ABCCBA), anticlimactic. The function given is recursive; I was expecting it to be palindromic. How difficult can it be to write such a function?
The easiest way is to cheat. The original function is
bool is_palindrome(const char *first, const char *last)
{
if (first < last) {
if (*first != *last) return false;
return is_palindrome(++first, --last);
}
return true;
}
is_palindrome(++first, --last);}return true;}//};eurt nruter};)tsal-- ,tsrif++(emordnilap_si
If we disallow comments, the task becomes harder, but not impossible.
Here is a palindromic sequence of Perl statements that evaluates to 1
if the Perl variable $_ forms a palindromic string,
and to 0 otherwise.
!!q+(_$ qe esrever ralacs)+;;+(scalar reverse eq $_)+q!!
Stan Kelly-Bootle also discusses how Turing or Knuth would
be delighted by binary instructions, especially if those
formed a palindrome.
Here is a palindromic 30-byte sequence representing i386 machine instructions.
At the end of this sequence, if the string starting at the
memory position pointed by the register SI and ending at
DI is a palindrome, AX will be 1,
otherwise it will be 0.
FC 31 C0 A6 75 07 4F 4F 39 FE 72 F6 40 EB 0F 0F EB 40 F6 72 FE 39 4F 4F 07 75 A6 C0 31 FC
Try this yourself, and see if you can improve these programs, or if you can write a palindrome checker in your favorite language. The programs should be syntactically correct, self-standing, concise, and, of course, palindromic. Ideally, all parts of the code should contribute to the end-result (the examples above don't fit this criterion). The Byzantines would say: ΝΙΨΟΝΑΝΟΜΗΜΑΤΑΜΗΜΟΝΑΝΟΨΙΝ
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