Output with the same length as the code

Question

In this challenge, you should write a program or function which takes no input and prints or returns a string with the same number of bytes as the program itself. There are a few rules:

• You may only output bytes in the printable ASCII range (0x20 to 0x7E, inclusive), or newlines (0x0A or 0x0D).
• Your code must not be a quine, so the code and the output must differ in at least one byte.
• Your code must be at least one byte long.
• If your output contains trailing newlines, those are part of the byte count.
• If your code requires non-standard command-line flags, count them as usual (i.e. by adding the difference to a standard invocation of your language's implementation to the byte count), and the output's length must match your solution's score. E.g. if your program is ab and requires the non-standard flag -n (we'll assume it can't be combined with standard flags, so it's 3 bytes), you should output 5 bytes in total.
• The output doesn't always have to be the same, as long as you can show that every possible output satisfies the above requirements.
• Usual quine rules don't apply. You may read the source code or its size, but I doubt this will be shorter than hardcoding it in most languages.

You may write a program or a function and use any of the standard methods of providing output. Note that if you print the result, you may choose to print it either to the standard output or the standard error stream, but only one of them counts.

You may use any programming language, but note that these loopholes are forbidden by default.

This is code-golf, so the shortest valid answer – measured in bytes – wins.

Leaderboard

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• Martin Ender: Related. Related.
• Martin Ender: @Mr.Xcoder Yes, if you declare them as such.
• Martin Ender: @DJMcMayhem I figured that in many esolangs it's trivial to print a null byte with one byte of code or similar things, and thought it would lead to more interesting answers if the results were actually readable.
• Wheat Wizard: @MartinEnder You should probably disallow output by exit code, which is a default. If you allow it nearly every one byte program in nearly every language is allowed. One user has already done this
• Martin Ender: @WheatWizard output by exit code is not a string, so it doesn't apply here.

Answer 1

Perl, (削除) 8 (削除ここまで) 7 bytes

print$␖

The seventh byte of this program is the control character \x16, which I can't put literally into the writeup. A hexdump of the source is 70 72 69 6e 74 24 16.

Output is something like v5.20.2 on the standard output. The exact output depends on the exact version, but almost always 7 characters in practical situations. There is no newline or whitespace in the source code or output.

Note that running this code also prints a long mandatory warning message to the standard error. If I understand correctly, that message is ignored by the golf rules.

---

One byte longer (but all printable) is this program:

;print**

The semicolon is there to pad the code to the same length as the output. The output is *main::*

Answer 2

Stax, 1 byte

æ

Run and debug online!

Bytes counted in CP437.

Just the packed version of the program 1. Not surprisingly the output is also 1. Since it is packed it is not a quine and is a valid answer.

Answer 3

VBA, 1 Byte

A surprisingly short answer for VBA

Anonymous VBE immediate window function that takes no input and outputs a single linefeed (vbLf) to the immediate window

?

Output

(A single linefeed)

Answer 4

Pascal (FPC), 22 bytes

begin write('':22)end.

Try it online!

:22 pads the write value to be at least 22 characters in length. Here, the write value is an empty string, so this prints 22 spaces.

• Kai Burghardt: −1 Byte: You do not need a string literal. begin write(1:21)end.

Answer 5

Javascript (ES6), 5 bytes

!1+''

outputs the string "false".

Answer 6

R, 25 bytes

sprintf("%.23f",runif(1))

Try it online!

Outputs (as a string) a random number between 0 and 1 with 23 decimal places, e.g.

0.84327139146625995635986

This is 25 characters overall, counting the initial 0.

There are shorter R solutions, but I wanted to post one with randomness since the challenge allows it explicitly.

• manatwork: At least on TIO this produces output of different length. Caught both 17 (0.703815360320732) and 19 (0.01503348327241838).
• Robin Ryder: @manatwork Thanks! This new version should work consistently.

Answer 7

brainfuck, (削除) 15 (削除ここまで) 32 bytes

++++++++[>++++>++++<<-]>+>[<.>-]

Try it online!

Illegal version (no ascii), 15 bytes

->+++++[<...>-]

Try it online!

• Dorian: Oh, I didn't have in mind that ascii is only up to character 0x7e and not 0xff. I made a new version.

Answer 8

brainfuck, 24 bytes

-[>+<---]++++++[->....<]

Try it online!

Prints 24 Us.

Explanation:

-[>+<---] # Generate a U
++++++[ # Loop 6 time
->....<] # Printing U 4 times each

Answer 9

Pyramid Scheme, 32 bytes

^ ^ ^
-^-^-
^-^-
-^-^
^-^-
- -

Try it online!

Outputs 16 zeroes and newlines. I can find a lot of alternative 32 byters with varying amounts of extra padding, but the closest I can come to something shorter is this 27 byte program that outputs 26 bytes

Answer 10

Zsh, 5 bytes

<<<$-

Prints 569X followed by a newline. Try it online!

The parameter $- outputs the current flags supplied to the shell. By default, it is set to 569X:

• 5: NOTIFY
• 6: BG_NICE
• 9: AUTO_LIST
• X: LIST_TYPES

When unsetting these options, $- is empty.

• roblogic: you is a tricksy hobbitses. nice answer

Answer 11

Actually, 2 bytes

Not winning of course, but I find it relatively interesting. (outputs 10)

1╤

Try it online!

Answer 12

Keg, 1 byte (SBCS)

1,

Try it online!

Now before you say "Hang on a second, that's 2 bytes: a 1 and a ,", it isn't. Unicode has these really nice symbols where they have a number and a comma combined. It push'n'prints the number 1, the length of the program.

Just don't go pasting this into programs like IDLE and tkinter... they don't particularly like 1,.

• Jo King: I don't see that character in the codepage for the language. What byte value does it have?
• lyxal: @JoKing 248. You don't see it because otherwise I couldn't use IDLE to edit Keg.py (as mentioned in my answer 1, isn't very much supported)
• Jo King: Perhaps move the code page to its own file, since you shouldn't have to edit it much?
• lyxal: @JoKing I've been trying to implement the code page using Mego's golflang-encoding repository to no avail.

Answer 13

Go, 22 bytes

func f(){print(0., f)}

On my machine, this prints

+0.000000e+0000x477c88

But the compiler could conceivably allocate f at an address other than 6 hex digits. If you don't like an implementation detail like that, the next best thing is the 26-byte

func f(){print(0.,1<<34)}

which prints

+0.000000e+00017179869184

Answer 14

Python 3, 29 bytes

s='s=%r;print(ss)';print(s%s)

Try it online!

Output

s='s=%r;print(ss)';print(ss)

A more quine-like answer than this answer

Answer 15

MAWP, 13 bytes

43W2M[84W;1A]

Prints 14 space characters.

Try it!

• Dion: Nice, but here codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/209253/92080 is a 1 byter :)
• Razetime: I thought the . was required for output. Anyway, the question asks for an ASCII character so I made this.
• Dion: Well, to be fair the output not appearing without a . was a bug that is now fixed, my bad. And 1 is also an ASCII character (49)

Answer 16

05AB1E, 1 byte

,

Try it online!

, # output top of stack (nothing) with trailing newline

Answer 17

Rust, (削除) 30 (削除ここまで) 28 bytes

fn main(){print!("{:28}",0)}

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Prints zero, padded with enough spaces so that it is 28 bytes long.

Answer 18

MAWP, 1 bytes

:

Try it!

Prints the 1 thats already on stack

• Jo King: A fun but longer solution is M:.
• Dion: @JoKing I'm a bit confused. The link you are giving points a completely different submission, while M:. would result in an error: M needs two numbers off the stack whereas the starting stack is only [1]. Could you please clarify what you meant?
• Jo King: Oh, weird, the generate link didn't work the way I expected it to. I meant this, which prints NaN
• Dion: @JoKing that is actually a really smart solution imo, feel free to post it as another solution

Answer 19

Red, 32 bytes

i: 1 until[prin i: i + 1 i > 20]

Try it online!

Sets i to 1, then increments i and prints it without trailing newlines until i is greater than 20. This prints the numbers [2..21] without delimiters, an output 32 characters long.

Answer 20

tinylisp, 3 bytes

(q(

Try it online!

Explanation

After parenthesis autocompletion, the code is (q()). The q macro prevents evaluation of its argument, which in this case is the empty list (). So the program outputs (), with a trailing newline.

• The Empty String Photographer: Wow, paren autocomplete?

Answer 21

Ruby 3, 6 bytes

p ?c*3

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Prints "ccc" with a trailing newline to get a 6-byte response.

Answer 22

Halfwit, 1 byte

><

Try It Online!

The compressed integer 0, which currently prints 0n.^*

^{*I'm going to change this soon}

Other interesting approaches:

Halfwit -A, 2 bytes

4+

Try It Online!

The -A flag turns characters into bytes. 4 is a predetermined constant [0, 1] and + is a NOP here.

Halfwit -A, 3 bytes

>;<M>f

Try It Online!

This is Mapping 3 (>;<) (converted to a range 1, 2, 3 on map) to 8 (>f), which then gets turned into characters and output.

Answer 23

Aheui (esotope), 30 bytes

받발땨희빠챠뎌뱧볗멍

Try it online!

Prints 15 copies of -1.

Aheui (esotope), 30 bytes

밤발땨희빠챠명뱧뼈더

Try it online!

Prints 191817161514131211109876543210, i.e. a countdown from 19 to 0 without spaces.

How these work

Aheui is a 2D language with Hangul characters. Each Hangul character consists of an initial consonant, a vowel, and an optional final consonant. In Aheui, the initial consonant defines the instruction, the vowel defines the next movement, and the final consonant provides an argument to the instruction (when necessary).

Aheui comes with multiple stacks and a queue, but the programs above are simple enough that they only operate on a single stack.

Relevant consonants:

• Initial consonant ᄇ: Pushes a constant or a value from stdin.
  • Final consonant ᄃ, ᄅ, ᄆ: Pushes 3, 5, 4 respectively.
  • ᄒ: Reads a UTF-8 character from stdin and pushes its value. On EOF, pushes -1.
• Initial consonant ᄃ, ᄄ: Pops two values and pushes the sum and product respectively.
• ᄈ: Duplicates the top value.
• ᄆ: Pops a value, and prints as integer if the final consonant is ᄋ.
• ᄎ: Pops a value. If it is 0, the next movement is reversed.
• ᄒ: Halts the program.

Relevant vowels:

• ᅡ, ᅥ, ᅩ, ᅮ: Move in the direction of the short stroke by 1 cell.
• ᅣ, ᅧ, ᅭ, ᅲ: Move in the same direction, but by 2 cells (jumping over a cell).

The two-cell movements allow simple loops to be encoded in a single line, and each character encoding both the instruction and the movement allows more flexible arrangement of code fragments.

받발땨희빠챠뎌뱧볗멍
받발땨
push 3; push 5; mul (i.e. push 15); enter loop with this loop counter
 빠챠
 if the current loop counter is 0, direct to 희 and halt
 뱧 멍 볗 뎌
 push -1, print, push -1, add
밤발땨희빠챠명뱧뼈더
밤발땨
push 4; push 5; mul (i.e. push 20); enter loop
 빠챠 (same as the other program)
 뱧 더 뼈 명
 push -1, add, dup, print

More info can be found in the language spec.

Answer 24

JavaScript REPL, 2 bytes

~0

So, apparently there is a limit to how small your submissions can be. Typing words here so I can submit. \$\$

• Bubbler: It only works in the REPL environment, not as regular code in a .js file - you need to call console.log or similar to actually output anything. So you should label your language as "JavaScript REPL".
• The Empty String Photographer: Polyglots with Python REPL

Answer 25

ForWhile 6 bytes

6(48#)

prints 6 zeros

5(9#)

would print 5 tabs (but tab is not an allowed character)

online interpreter

Explanation

6( \ start for-loop with 6 iterations
48# \ print 0
) \ end for-loop

Answer 26

Julia 1.0, 6 bytes

@show^

Try it online!

Prints ^ = ^ followed by a newline.

Answer 27

Electra, (削除) 18 (削除ここまで) 15 bytes

NONO<??
ONO---o

Prints 15 zeros

Answer 28

Mornington Crescent, (削除) 1537 (削除ここまで) (削除) 1354 (削除ここまで) (削除) 1084 (削除ここまで) (削除) 449 (削除ここまで) 354 bytes

Take Northern Line to Bank
Take Circle Line to Great Portland Street
Take Circle Line to Paddington
Take District Line to Paddington
Take District Line to Paddington
Take District Line to Paddington
Take District Line to Paddington
Take Circle Line to Paddington
Take Circle Line to Bank
Take Circle Line to Bank
Take Northern Line to Mornington Crescent

Try it online!

Answer 29

PHP, 17 bytes

<?php echo 9**17;

Because I wanted to beat Mayube's answer ;)

Try it online!

• Mayube: Touche. I'll get you next time ;)
• Mayube: Looks like I got you, kind of :D
• Jörg Hülsermann: same way golfed <?=9**8;
• Christoph: Sorry can't beat Mayube/Jörg's byte count but at least I can give a good and creative tip: <?=1/64;.

Answer 30

Go, 60 bytes

I don't know if this is hard in Go or if I'm failing to see something obvious.

import(."fmt"
."strings")
func main(){Print(Repeat("a",60))}

Try it online!

• CalculatorFeline: Can you do something like 1e30 or 10^49?
• totallyhuman: @CalculatorFeline 1e30 would print 1e+37 and 10^49 would print 37 (due to bitwise operation).