What is the smallest positive base 10 integer that can be printed by a program shorter (in characters) than itself?

Question

I think the question as above is clear, but just in case:

• Write a full program (not just a function) which prints a positive base 10 integer, optionally followed by a single newline.

• Qualifying programs will be those whose output is longer (in bytes) than the source code of the program, measured in bytes (assuming ASCII or UTF-8 encoding for the program source code).

  I.e. the code must be shorter than the number of digits in the resulting number.

• Leading zeros are disallowed under all circumstances. Counting leading zeroes trivialises the problem; ignoring leading zeros unnecessarily complicates the question.

• The winning program will be the qualifying program which prints the integer with the smallest magnitude.

Leaderboard snippet

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• trichoplax is on Codidact now: Number 1 on the Hot Network Questions. Not bad for a first question...
• Arandur: @Kslkgh Strictly less than, otherwise the question is trivial for programs which implicitly print their last value.
• histocrat: Is 1.0 an integer?
• lirtosiast: The restriction to UTF-8 is ridiculous and detrimental. Bytes are bytes, no matter the encoding. I strongly recommend that you change the rules, as as they currently are they disallow languages that are not character-based (e.g. Minecraft, Piet, Folders) or have longer UTF-8 byte counts than their "real" (valid according to this question) byte counts (e.g. APL, TI-BASIC, Seriously, Jelly).
• Martin Ender: @ZachGates that's not how the HNQ list works. ;)

Answer 1

Retina, score 1

The empty program counts the number of matches of the empty regex in the input (which is the empty string). That's exactly 1 match, so it prints 1.

Try it online.

• Arandur: ... WE HAVE A WINNER.
• nicael: Just btw, I'd say the number of matches is infinite. The empty string can repeat an unlimited number of times and be matched infinitely.
• Martin Ender: @nicael Luckily, that's not how regex works. ;)
• Sparr: @MartinBüttner that depends on your regex engine. I've definitely encountered systems that will crap out if you ever try to match the empty string.
• Martin Ender: @LorenPechtel that rule applies only to quine challenges where the empty program is trivially a solution in most languages. I think it's fair game here, since this empty program actually has non-trivial semantics and Retina does not have this behaviour because of challenges like this but because it's the only consistent generalisation of its behaviour for all single-line programs.

Answer 2

Pyth, 10

T

First attempt at using Pyth. Having had the question clarified, it seems 10 will be the smallest number. In Pyth the letter T starts off as the number 10, so this simply prints 10 which is larger than the length of the source code. You can try it here.

• djechlin: I like how your first attempt at using Pyth is just the letter T.
• Deusovi: Well, I thought this would be the most readable Pyth program I'd see for a while, but this is impressively easy to understand.
• Magic Octopus Urn: This is a polygot, this works in 05AB1E too. 05ab1e.tryitonline.net/#code=VA

Answer 3

bc, 10

A

Luckily, bc prints the result of the last expression by default. A is interpreted as a hex digit, so results in 10.

• nicael: But there're already (at least) 5 similar answers, including the solution with A, because many golfing languages are defining A as 10.
• Digital Trauma: @nicael Yes, that's true. I claim this answer is different because bc is not a golfing language. It is in fact a Posix-defined language available by default on just about any standard *nix system you can find.

Answer 4

Fishing, score (削除) 7,958,661,109,946,400,884,391,936 (削除ここまで) 1,208,925,819,614,629,174,706,176

Is this the highest non-trivial-looking score ever in a minimization challenge? (Even though it has been golfed by 84.8%)

v+CCCCCCCCCC
 `32`nSSSSP

---

Explanation

v Sets the casting direction to down
 + Increments the casting distance by 1
 CCCCCCCCCC Casts the rod
`32` Pushes a string "32" to the stack
 n Converts the stack from a string to an integer
 SSSS Repeated squaring of the stack
 P Prints the stack

The number is 32^16 and has 25 digits. The code is 24 bytes long. The previous answer was 6^32.

• Arandur: Brought a tear to my eye. Thank you for your contribution.
• Arcturus: It will probably still beat Java... Hopefully.
• LegionMammal978: Well, it beats C#...
• Stack Exchange Broke The Law: Why 6 and not 9?
• Arcturus: @immibis The goal of the challenge is to minimize the score, so it's not just minimizing bytes; putting 9 before would have increased my score unnecessarily.

Answer 5

MATLAB, 1,000,000,000 (10⁹)

Also works with Octave

disp(1e9)

Never going to beat the esolangs, but just for fun, this is the smallest MATLAB/Octave will be able to do, so thought I would post it anyway.

• Arandur: The esolang answers, while valid, are kinda boring. Glad to see one that isn't!
• derobert: perl say 1e9 is slightly shorter, if you want to improve your golf score. (Though it's nowhere near the smaller integer for which this approach works...)
• dberm22: @derobert True. 1e1 would satisfy the problem statement and give a score of 10 (the lower, the better) (Assuming a char is 1 byte)
• SuperJedi224: @dberm22 10 (2 characters) is not longer than 1e1 (3 characters)
• dberm22: @SuperJedi224 Ahh, I read it as the magnitude of the printed number has to be larger than the bytecount, not the number of digits in the printed number. Thanks for the clarification.

Answer 6

TI-84 BASIC, 120

5!

ᴇ2 would score better if not for the silly UTF-8 requirement. (It's only two bytes in the calculator's native tokenized encoding, but it's 4 in UTF-8...)

• jbg: Maybe I’m missing something, but the string "E2" is only two bytes in UTF-8...
• SuperJedi224: @JasperBryant-Greene ᴇ and E are not the same character. In TI-BASIC, ᴇ is scientific notation and E is a variable.
• jbg: Thanks :) I should have noticed that the character was subtly-smaller-than-full-height...
• dberm22: Wouldn't 3! score better?
• SuperJedi224: @NobodyNada This time the question specifically said to score in UTF8, for some reason.

Answer 7

Hexagony, score 100100

Code:

d!!@

In a more readable form:

 d !
 ! @ .
 . .

The char value of d is 100. This will simply print the char value twice and terminates after.

Try it online!

• Arandur: Cute! Thank you for your contribution.
• RK.: More readable form? Really? xD

Answer 8

C#, score (削除) 10^72 (削除ここまで) (削除) 10^70 (削除ここまで) (削除) 10^64 (削除ここまで) 10^63

class A{static void Main(){System.Console.Write($"1{0:D63}");}}

That's 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. I guess that I tried...

• Arandur: Stunning, really.
• lynn: Wouldn't Write(new string('1',70)) be better?
• goric: You can write it out as a double rather than a string, which shortens it to 10^56 : class A{static void Main(){System.Console.Write(1e56);}}
• LegionMammal978: @goric That just outputs 1E+56.

Answer 9

JavaScript, score 100,000,000,000 (or 1*10¹¹)

alert(1e11)

This is if using alert. Though you can get 100 000 000 times lesser score if using console:

1e3

Score 1000 as you can see, I'm not sure it counts using the console though.

• Arandur: I don't know why it wouldn't count!
• trichoplax is on Codidact now: @Arandur I'm guessing "I'm not sure it counts" refers to the lower score of 1000, since that requires using the console as a REPL, rather than being a full program.
• nicael: @tri exactly, made a clarification.
• edc65: +1 for alert, I would not allow the automatic console output

Answer 10

PlatyPar, 59

#

# starts a numeric base-60 literal, and since no digits are found, it ends up as 59. This started as a happy accident, but since I have already [ab]used this bug in another answer, I kept it.

Try it online!

Here's another approach, my take on the boring way that everyone and their grandmother used for this challenge.

PlatyPar, 100000000 (9 digits)

'18Md0+;

Explanation

'1 ## push "1" (a string) to the stack
 8Md ; ## repeat 8 times
 0+ ## add a 0
 ## [implicitly] print the result

Try it online!

Answer 11

C, 1000000000000000000000000000 (28 digits)

main(){printf("1%027d",0);}

Similar to my C++ answer, without the #include <stdio.h> (Ignore the warning about missing declaration of printf. Thanks @Dennis)

Newline would require an additional 2 bytes, using format 1%029d\n

Answer 12

Brainf**k, 11111111111111111111111111111111111 (~1e34)

And another reduction:

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

Which gives 35 consecutive 1's, or approximately 1e34.

---

A bit smaller still

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

Gives 36 1's which is a number about 11% larger than 1e35.

---

Thanks to @Martin Büttner for knocking off a couple of characters reducing the total output by a factor of 100 with this code (yields 1e36):

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

---

My old code (yields 1+e38):

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

I've been experimenting with esolangs out of boredom. This is the best I could do in BF. I wonder if it is possible to make it smaller?

You can try it online here.

• lynn: I wrote a shorter answer, from scratch: link
• Tom Carpenter: @Mauris impressive!

Answer 13

Japt, score 10

A

As shows the score, prints 10.

• The Fifth Marshal: This is not code golf;the goal is to print the smallest number, your score is 10.
• nicael: @ppp "The number must be longer in bytes than the program -- have more digits than the code has characters" - OP's just edited.
• Arandur: You have not misunderstood; if the Japt program A prints 10, then this is a valid program with a score of 10.
• ETHproductions: Woohoo, my language is tied for <s>first</s> second place! glares at Retina
• nicael: Any reason for downvote?

Answer 14

Python 2, 101010101010

print'10'*6

Answer 15

PHP, score 10,000,000

<?=1e7;

This prints 10000000 as can be seen there.

• WGroleau: Since the OP asked for the smallest integer, why did you pick an exponent of seven? Does it print without commas?
• nicael: @WGroleau it does print without any commas, justachat.freevar.com/test.php

Answer 16

Brainfuck, 3333333333333333333333333 (25 threes)

This is written "from scratch" so I think it's okay to post a separate answer:

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

23 bytes long.

• Rohan Jhunjhunwala: I was considering a bf solution, are there any current interpreters that only output as numbers?
• Level River St: @RohanJhunjhunwala this outputs 51 (the ASCII code for "3") 25 times.
• Rohan Jhunjhunwala: @LevelRiverSt what Im saying is that there might exist a bf interpreter that doesn't input as ascii and only does integer output, thus (-.) would output 255.

Answer 17

Labyrinth, score 10,000,000

1!!!!>@

It might be possible to bring this down by one order of magnitude, but I can't find anything right now.

The first 1!!!! prints 1000. Then > shifts the source code to

@1!!!!>

which avoids early termination. Then the IP hits a dead end and turns around. Now !!!! prints four more zeroes and @ terminates the program.

Try it online.

Answer 18

Samau, 42

A

A pushes the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything onto the stack. Then the top of the stack is automatically printed.

• Doorknob: I think something is wrong with your commit messages :P
• alephalpha: @Doorknob冰 I don't know how to write commit messages, so I just use random emojis.
• Cyoce: Ok, here's the real question: what does Q push?

Answer 19

DC, 10000

4 chars program:

I4^f

5 digits output:

$ dc<<<'I4^f'
10000

• Digital Trauma: +1. Yep, I think that's optimal in dc. Unusually bc is shorter.
• Toby Speight: I thought I was doing well with 6d^p (yielding 46656), but you have that beat - well done!

Answer 20

Vitsy, 7! = 5040

7FN

Outputs 5040.

Try it online!

• Peter Taylor: Why not 3FN outputting 6?
• Addison Crump: @PeterTaylor The number has to be greater in length, not greater in magnitude.

Answer 21

C, 11111111111111111111111111111111111 (35 ones)

main(c){while(c++<36)putchar(49);}

Maybe there's a shorter way. The lack of a simple way to print big numbers in C makes it tricky.

Answer 22

CJam, score 10

A

Try it online!

• Peter Taylor: Why not Y, score 2?
• Dennis: Because 2 is only one character, so it isn't longer than the source code.

Answer 23

Python 2, 107918163081

print 69**6

• Bakuriu: You can remove the space between print and the 2.
• Blue: @Bakuriu No you can't
• Neil: 69**6 is only 107918163081.
• Grimmy: Interstingly enough, this also works in Perl.
• mbomb007: Technically, you can remove the space by replacing it with a +.

Answer 24

Java, 111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 (81 ones)

interface A{static void main(String[]a){for(A i:new A[81])System.out.print(1);}}
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I've underlined the part that is actually "variable" here; everything else is absolutely necessary for a working Java program.

Presumably this is shorter than mucking around with Java's BigInteger.

• OldCurmudgeon: Presumably ... - perhaps System.out.print(BigInteger.TEN.pow(10)); - is that one character less? Sorry - nowhere near big enough - and .pow(10).pow(10) is longer.
• LegionMammal978: You can replace interface with class.
• lynn: But then main would need to be public.
• Jack Ammo: you can shave off 2 characters by doing this for the for loop: for(A a:new A[81])
• ETHproductions: @OldCurmudgeon Would .pow(100) not work for some reason?

Answer 25

Cubix, 100100

@'dOu

Cubix is a 2-dimensional, stack-based esolang. Cubix is different from other 2D langs in that the source code is wrapped around the outside of a cube.

Test it online!

Explanation

The first thing the interpreter does is figure out the smallest cube that the code will fit onto. In this case, the edge-length is 1. Then the code is padded with no-ops . until all six sides are filled. Whitespace is removed before processing, so this code is identical to the above:

 @
' d O u
 .

Now the code is run. The IP (instruction pointer) starts out on the far left face, pointing east.

The first char the IP encounters is ', which pushes the next byte onto the stack; this byte is d, or 100. Next is O, which outputs the top item (100) as an integer.

Then the IP hits u, which turns it to the right, moves it forward, then turns it again. It switches to the bottom face pointing north, then rotates to the east. This wraps it to the O again, outputting 100, then up to @ which terminates the program.

Answer 26

Jelly, score 120

5!

Calculates the factorial of 5. Try it online!

• Addison Crump: It specifies that the text encoding should be UTF-8 - is that followed here?
• Arandur: I was going to say -- this might be the first esolang that actually can't trivially answer this question.
• Dennis: @FlagAsSpam I missed that unusual rule. It's fixed now.

Answer 27

MATL, 1000

1e3

Note: latest GitHub commit of the compiler works on Octave as well as on Matlab.

This interprets the number in scientific notation, and implicitly prints it, thus producing the output

1000

Answer 28

Perl, 1000000000

print 1e9

Straightforward.

• Neil: Can't you reduce your score by using say?
• lynn: That would require enabling the -E flag, I suppose. I'm not sure how to count that, in this challenge.
• ThisSuitIsBlackNot: Since "-M5.010, when needed, is free," you shouldn't have to count it at all.

Answer 29

C++, 1e46

#include <stdio.h>
main(){printf("1%046d",0);}

Newline would require an additional 2 bytes, using format "1%048d\n"

• Toby Speight: I don't think C++ allows you to omit the return type of main(). OTOH, this would make a good C answer...
• l4m2: #include <stdio.h> => #include<stdio.h> or even #include<cstdio>

Answer 30

O, 10

A

Apparently the score is the number we print!