Output Pi without math

Question

In as few bytes as possible, your job is to write a program that outputs:

3.14

In celebration of a late Pi day of course! :)

Rules

You can do it anyway you like, but there are some restrictions.

• You may not use arithmetic operations anywhere in your program. This includes +, -, *, /, %, ^ (exponentiation), etc... This also includes incrementing (usually ++), decrementing (--), bitwise operations, and any built in functions that can be used as a replacement such as sum(), prod(), mod(), double(), pow(), sqrt(), inc(), dec(), etc... (Author's discretion)
• The digits 3, 1, and 4 may not appear anywhere in your code.
• You may not use any predefined variables/constants that your language may have as a replacement for 3, 1, and 4. (Author's discretion)
• You may also not use any trigonometric functions such as sin(), cos(), tan(), arcsin(), arccos(), arctan(), sinh(), cosh(), tanh(), etc... (Author's discretion)
• You may not use built-in or predefined values of Pi (or 3.14). No web requests.
• Your program cannot require input of any kind (besides running it).
• 3.14 is the only thing that you may output, it cannot be part of some longer/larger output..

Winner

The answer with the least amount of bytes on April 18th wins. Good luck!

Looking forward to clever answers from clever minds! Malbolge anyone? :P

Answer 1

CJam - 8 6

S`,'.E

CJam is a new language I am developing, similar to GolfScript - http://sf.net/p/cjam.
Here is the explanation:

S is a variable preinitialized to space (" ")
` generates the string representation of the last value - which is exactly " " (3 characters)
, calculates the string length (3)
'. is the dot character
E is a variable preinitialized to 14; 3, 1 and 4 are not allowed but it doesn't say anything about 14 :)

Credits to Doorknob for the backtick idea

Answer 2

PHP - 22 bytes

<?=date('n.j',8899e5);

Pi Day in year 1998 was really cool!

Answer 3

C, 39

Assumes the machine is little-endian and uses IEEE floating-point standard.

main(){printf("%.2f",*(float*)"P@I@");}

The fun fact is that "P@I@" is actually not related to PI but is equivalent to 0x40494050 which is the representation of 3.144550323486328

http://ideone.com/uXVEtl

Answer 4

dc, 11 9 bytes

zE[.]znPp

• z Push current stack depth (0) onto the stack
• E Push E₁₆ (==14₁₀)
• [.] Push the string "."
• z Push current stack depth (3) onto the stack
• n Pop 3 and print as number
• P Pop "." and print as char
• p Pop 14 and print as number with newline

Output:

$ dc <<< zE[.]znPp
3.14
$ 

Answer 5

JavaScript (ES5) 20 bytes

A variation of m.buettner's JS solution.

(x='.'+0xE).length+x

---

Edit: JavaScript (ES5) 18 bytes

A variation of ComFreek's idea of using the base64 decode function.

atob('Mw')+'.'+0xE

---

Edit: Javascript (ES5) 16 bytes

If the unary + operator is allowed to cast a string to a number, it can be reduced to:

+atob('MDMuMTQ')

Answer 6

Haskell, 41 bytes

When is pi day in Australia?

p=(\(a:n:y:t:i:m:e:_)->[m,a,t,e])['.'..]

Edited to add: like the other Haskell answer, that outputs a string, so has quotes. You can score 33, and be strictly within the rules, but it's less fun:

p=putStr$map([','..]!!)[7,2,5,8]

Answer 7

Morse Code, 33 Bytes

morse -d ...-- .-.-.- .---- ....-

Technically speaking, the information only takes 21 bytes.

Answer 8

J - 15 11 10 char

Made it shorter, using the fantastic i:.

6{i:6.28j8

Explained:

• 6.28j8 - The complex number 6.28 + 8i.
• i: - This is where the magic happens. i: on a complex number A+Bi, B≠0 takes B+1 equally spaced points from the interval [-A,A].
• 6{ - Take element at index 6, which just so happens to be 3.14.

Previously, we had the following nonsense:

|.'.'2}":22b8d5

Explained by explosion:

         22b8d5  NB. 8d5 in base 22 = 4163
       ":        NB. convert to string
  '.'2}          NB. change character at index 2 to '.'
|.               NB. reverse to make '3.14'

Answer 9

Linux command line, 35 bytes

This one is nowhere near winning, but here it is for the fun of it:

ping -w2 67502862|grep -oP '.\..\d'

Output (after 2 seconds):

$ ping -w2 67502862|grep -oP '.\..\d'
3.14
$

Answer 10

GolfScript, 18 13 12

'.'.`,\.,n`,

Old version:

'...','.'.,'....',

It's very artistic, only 3 unique characters! ;)

How it works:

# cmd   # stack
'...',  # 3
'.'.    # 3 '.' '.'
,       # 3 '.' 1
'....', # 3 '.' 1 4

Here's an explanation of the 12-char version (much more interesting, IMO):

'.' # '.'
.`, # '.' 3
\.  # 3 '.' '.'
,   # 3 '.' 1
n`, # 3 '.' 1 4

It works because n`, is 4, since n` is '"\n"'. Same logic for '.'`,. It also swaps instead of creating a new string to save a char (thanks @algorithmshark).

Alternate version:

'pi ','.'.,'day!',

or

'Hi ','.'.,'PPCG',

Or anything in those strings, really. :P

Answer 11

OP's answer.

Mathematica, 21 20 18

This feels cheap...

Range[2,5,.06][[20]]

or

Range[2,5,.02][[58]]

Figured out how to make it 18:

Range[-.86,5][[5]]

Haskell, 49 48 12

(48 includes the new line character)

p=[-6..]
r=concat$show(p!!9):".":(show$p!!20):[]

Run it by calling the r function.

Using the method as with Mathematica above, you can type this into GHCi:

[-2.86..]!!6

Java, 87 86

class P{public static void main(String[]a){System.out.print("tri".length()+"."+0xe);}}

Scala, 27

Translated from Java as suggested by Score_Under. (I don't really know Scala)

print("tri".length+"."+0xe)

Answer 12

Bash, 50

Help/error messages aren't external resources, they're a command's output!

If anything is rule abuse, this is it. It uses the coincidence that the help message given to STDERR by the exact command

ping6

is 314 characters long (at least on Ubuntu 13.10 with iputils-121221). EDIT: I appreciate that this is much less portable than I expected...

m=`ping6|&wc -c`
false
o=$?
echo ${m:0:o}.${m:o:2}

The first line takes the character length of the help message and stores it in a variable.

As in my other answers, the next few lines obtain the number 1 by taking the exit status of false (not very portable but this is code-golf after all!), then use that value to insert a decimal point in the last line

Output: 3.14

Answer 13

Bash+TeX 28 bytes

If you have TeX installed:

tex -v|head -c8|cut -d\  -f2

The version number of TeX asymptotically approaches pi as the software improves. So, as time goes on, you can use this (nonconforming) implementation to print more and more digits!

tex -v|cut -d\  -f2 | head -n1

This printed 3.1415926 back in 2011; as of January 2014, it will print 3.14159265.

Answer 14

JavaScript, 20 bytes

'...'.length+'.'+0xe

Use it in a console, so that the result is directly printed. Otherwise, alert(...) will add another 7 characters.

Same as my other answer, I just noticed it's a lot shorter in JS.

The idea of using 0xe for 14 is taken from the OP's submission with the OP's kind permission.

Answer 15

GNU date, 17 bytes

date -d2/5 +%u.%y

This one only guaranteed to work this year, but I don't see any limitation in the rules about this ;-)

The + is simply indicates the start of the format specifier for date and is not an arithmetic addition. Same with the -, indicating input date.

Output:

$ date -d2/5 +%u.%y
3.14
$

Answer 16

Bash, 17 bytes

tr 0 .<<<$[62#MC]

---

Dash, 41 bytes

perl -pechomp,s/./$./<<$


..










.

Answer 17

Bash 23 22

seq 2 .02 5|sed -n 58p

---

Shell (without history expansion) 20

seq 2 .02 5|sed 58!d

Answer 18

Python, 39 or 28 47 or 34

(Thank you Score_Under for golfing it down so much)

print"%s.%s%c"%(len('aaa'),len('a'),52)

+ here is the string concatenation operator, not addition.

Copying the 0xe trick from the OP, here's 28 chars with help from @psal

print('%X.%s'%(675,0xE))[2:]

Old versions:

print str(len('aaa'))+'.'+str(len('a'))+chr(52)

print str(len('aaa'))+'.'+str(0xe)

print"%s.%s"%(len('aaa'),0xe)

Answer 19

GolfScript, 8 bytes

'??.'(\(

This program contains non-printable ASCII characters, so it cannot be directly pasted here. Instead, the question marks in the code above should be replaced with the bytes 03 and 0E in hexadecimal.

For convenience, here's a hex dump of the actual program. Unix / Linux users can run this hex dump through xxd -r to reconstruct the program:

0000000: 2703 0e2e 2728 5c28                      '...'(\(

Explanation:

• The first five bytes of the program form a single-quoted string literal encoding the three characters with the ASCII codes 3, 14 and 46 (= ASCII period).

• ( chops the first character off the string and pushes its ASCII code (3) on the stack. \ swaps the top two items on the stack, pulling the string back to the top, and the second ( chops another character off the string, again pushing its ASCII code (14) on the stack.

At the end of the program, the stack (excluding the empty input string) therefore looks like this:

3 "." 14

At the end of the program, the default behavior of the GolfScript interpreter is to stringify and print everything on the stack, yielding the desired output.

Answer 20

bash -- 39

We all know that the first few digits of Pi can be computed from the following statement:

May I have a large container of coffee

We need only 2 decimal places, right?

m=May
i=I
h=have
echo ${#m}.${#i}${#h}

Answer 21

Perl, 15 20 bytes

print 05706=~s/0/./r
print 0xbc6=~s/0/./r

Answer 22

Mathematica - 78

DateList["March"<>ToString@FromDigits@"E"]~DateString~{"MonthShort",".","Day"}

Answer 23

tr + Bash, 17 bytes

tr a-j 0-9<<<d.be

The - chars here are not arithmetic subtraction operators. They indicate range.

Output:

$ tr a-j 0-9<<<d.be
3.14
$

Answer 24

BASH, 57

This is longer than most answers, but there is nothing bad in trying.

f=`echo aaaaaaaaaaaaa|wc -c`;e=`echo aa|wc -c`;echo $e.$f

gives

3.14

Answer 25

C, 36

main(){printf("%d\b.%o\b",' ','`');}

Answer 26

JavaScript - 23 bytes

atob('Mw')+atob('LjE0')

Thanks to nderscore (see his comments)!

Answer 27

GolfScript, 13 10

{xy}.*'.'\

Thanks to Ilmari Karonen for the improved version!

x and y are non-printable characters (see http://www.asciitable.com/ for more info), respectively ETX and SO, which decode to 3 and 14.

What this code does should be pretty clear.

Note: The following rule

You may not use any predefined variables/constants that your language may have as a replacement for 3, 1, and 4. (Author's discretion)

is not broken, since ASCII characters are neither variables, nor constants.

Answer 28

C#

 ((int)'ĺ').ToString("#\\.##");

ĺ is character 314, not a pre-defined variable or constant. the .ToString formats the output into a digit, a period, and then 2 more digits.

Answer 29

New to the site and can't write comments yet, so I'll post it here. Just wondering about this Javascript solution:

'...'.length+'.'+0xe

and this rule:

3.14 is the only thing that you may output, it cannot be part of some longer/larger output..

If I run this code in my browser console, I get:

"3.14"

or using Node at the command line:

'3.14'

but if I run this code:

parseFloat('...'.length+'.'+0xe)

I get:

3.14

Using Node.js to run a .js file, I can write:

console.log('...'.length+'.'+0xe)

and get:

3.14

Answer 30

Mathematica, 56 bytes

(l=ToString@StringLength@#&)@"..."<>"."<>l@"."<>l@"...."

Not much to say. I'm generating the digits as string lengths and concatenate them.

Answer 31

Python, 49

a=str(range(298,500,2)[8]);print a[0]+'.'+a[5<6:]

Explanation

• range(298,500,2)[8]-Clever way to get 314
• a=str(314) - '314'
• a[0]-3
• 5<6-Shorter than True which means 1
• a[5<6:] - a[1:] - '14'
• print a[0]+'.'+a[5<6:] - Putting the . and printing. The +s are string-concatenators.

---

Python _{(abusing the rules unless OP abuses their discretion)}52 43

from cmath import*
print round(phase(-2),2)

Answer 32

Pure bash, 22 bytes

a=.$[0xE];echo ${#a}$a

Output:

$ a=.$[0xE];echo ${#a}$a
3.14
$

$[0xE] is just a base conversion with no actual arithmetic explicitly performed, so I assume this is legal.

Answer 33

Perl, 22 bytes

print pack N,858665268

Answer 34

BF,45 chars(without \n)

How About BF

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

thanks for pointing out that it only needs 3.14

Answer 35

Bash, 53 (using seq)

Does seq count as arithmetic?

Reuses bits of my other answer. Based on string length - it generates a string which is 314 characters long.

m=`seq -8 99|wc -c`
false
o=$?
echo ${m:0:o}.${m:o:2}

Line 1 generates a sequence of integers between -8 and 99 using seq and sends the result to wc -c which counts the number of bytes in its input. The result is stored in m.

After this point, it's the same as my other answer:

m should now be 314. Now I want to insert a decimal point after the first character... but I'd need the digit 1 to do that!

Lines 3 and 4 circumvent that by taking the exit status of false and storing it in a variable. The exit status of false isn't 1 on some systems, so this isn't very portable, but this is code-golf after all!

Line 5 concatenates the first character of m, a decimal point and the next two characters of m, and prints the result to standard output.

Output: 3.14.

Answer 36

PowerShell - 47 24 20

Update: after seeing @grax's answer, use a single [char], and use format string.

'{0:#\.##}'-f+"ĺ"[0]  

Answer 37

JavaScript, 22

Just a modification of ComFreek's idea

atob(atob('TXk0eE5B'))

JavaScript, 150

A different way just for fun

while(!m||a[0]>=(0+a)[a.length]){a=(Math.random()+"").replace(/(.)(.)(.*)(.)(..)/,"$2.$5");
m=a.match(/([^0-25-9]).[^02-9][^0-25-9]/)}m[0]

The idea was to get a random numbers until it is the desired one. Challenge was not to use the forbidden digits :) The two regexes should be possible to combine into one but I'm too tired now :)

Answer 38

Matlab - 39 characters with a bit of magic

39 characters:

x=magic(6);fprintf('%d.%d\n',x([2,29]))

output:

3.14

magic(6) produces a magic square of size 6x6. It happens to provide the same square every time, which allows us to cherry-pick numbers. Matlab R2011b is used here.

Answer 39

Bash, 72

I would use base64... if the digit 4 didn't appear in it!!

I might have used tr but that's already been done...

So instead I'm going to misuse chmod, which is by no means the shortest solution. What this script does is set its own permissions to the octal mode 314, then insert a decimal point.

chmod u=wx,o=r,g=x $0
m=`stat -c%a $0`
false
o=$?
echo ${m:0:o}.${m:o:2}

The first line sets the script file's permissions to the equivalent of octal mode 314 (--wx--xr--).

The second line uses stat and its --format option (shortened to -c) to get the file's octal mode only, represented by %a. The result is saved to a variable m.

After the second line, m should be 314. Now I want to insert a decimal point after the first character... but I'd need the digit 1 to do that!

Lines 3 and 4 circumvent that by taking the exit status of false and storing it in a variable. The exit status of false isn't 1 on some systems, so this isn't very portable, but this is code-golf after all!

Line 5 concatenates the first character of m, a decimal point and the next two characters of m, and prints the result to standard output.

Output: 3.14.

Answer 40

Ruby - 78

Long one, but it can be easily extended to print more digits.

a="How I wish".split(' ')
print "#{a.shift.length}." 
a.each{|w|print w.length}

And the output: 3.14

Longer(194) version for more digits:

a="How I wish I could enumerate pi easily since all these bullshit mnemonics prevent recalling any of the sequence more simply".split(' ')
print "#{a.shift.length}."
a.each{|w|print w.length}

and output: 3.14159265358979323846.

Answer 41

PHP (30 bytes)

Longer than most here, but uses only very dirty tricks:

<?=ceil(2.5).'.'.(!0).chr(52);

Another version (29 bytes), if error reporting is disabled, otherwise outputs a notice:

<?=ceil(2.5).'.'.hexdec(E);?>

Answer 42

C, 58

main(){printf("%d.%d%c",(int)ceil(2.9),(int)ceil(.8),52);}

C, 43

With a little cheating. Constants for 14 were not forbidden.

main(){printf("%d.%d",(int)ceil(2.9),0xe);}

Answer 43

VB.NET - 0

After failing to write anything under 16 bytes, I decided to just make a joke answer. A PictureBox holds a saved screenshot of the "3.14" from the original post, instead of actual digits, so if you're looking for output in text format, I have failed.

But hey, I didn't have to write any code at all! And technically it shows exactly what the original post says to output...

Answer 44

Oracle SQL,56

select to_char(to_date('70907','YMMDD'),'Q.WD')from dual

Output:

3.14

Answer 45

BASH

Not the shortest of the bunch, but it doesn't contain any numbers so I thought it was kind of cool:

29 bytes

wc<<<'a

'|sed 's/ /./;s/ //'

Output:

3.14

Answer 46

Java, 65

System.out.println("abc".length()+"."+"abcdefghijklmn".length());

Answer 47

Tcl, 28

puts [scan ^C %c].[scan ^N %c]

^C and ^N are one byte. Each one is obtained by pressing Alt+03 and Alt+014. They correspond to ASCII control chars ♥ and ♫

Answer 48

JavaScript, 32 bytes

'３.１４'.normalize('NFKD')

Not sure if it is valid, and it also not the shortest. But post this just for fun since did not find a similar one.

Answer 49

C++, 214 202

Only works for little-endian processors... Big-endian version would be shorter.

#include<algorithm>
#include<iostream>
#include<iterator>
union u{int i;char c[];};struct s{u a,b;};int main(){s x;x.a.i=858665268;std::reverse_copy(x.a.c,x.b.c,std::ostream_iterator<char>(std::cout));}

Answer 50

JavaScript - 46 43

Not very original, but who cares :)

(a="a+b").length+(b=".")+b.length+(a+b).length

And after some help from nderscore:

(a="a+b")[L="length"]+(b=".")+b[L]+(a+b)[L]

(Note: all occurrences of + are string concatenations).

Answer 51

Java, 106 95

class A{public static void main(String[]a){System.out.print((""+(int)'ཊ').replace('9','.'));}}

Answer 52

PHP, 22

<?=ceil(M_E),'.',0xE?>

3,1,4 does not appear in the code and M_E is none of them

Perl, 29

printf "%d.%d",(-2..5)[5],0xE

Perl, 25

print((-2..5)[5],".",0xE)

Awk 54

END{split(systime(),a,"");printf a[2]"."a[7-6]"%c",52}

Awk (Bonus)

END{O=""=="";X=O""O;X+=O+=O+O;print O"."X;}

I know it uses arithmetics but at least there are no numbers at all! XOXOXOX

Answer 53

APL (with lambdas), 21 character (byte count depend on encoding)

APL capable font needed to see this.

{⍴⍵,⍎⍵}'⍞←⌽".",⍕⍴⍕⍳2'

Here explained

{⍴⍵,⍎⍵}'⍞←⌽".",⍕⍴⍕⍳2'           
⍴'⍞←⌽".",⍕⍴⍕⍳2',⍎'⍞←⌽".",⍕⍴⍕⍳2' # lambda applied
⍴'⍞←⌽".",⍕⍴⍕⍳2',⍞←⌽".",⍕⍴⍕⍳2    # string is being evaluated as expression
⍴'⍞←⌽".",⍕⍴⍕⍳2',⍞←⌽".",⍕⍴⍕1 2   # ⍳2 expanded to 1 2
⍴'⍞←⌽".",⍕⍴⍕⍳2',⍞←⌽".",⍕⍴'1 2'  # 1 2 stringized
⍴'⍞←⌽".",⍕⍴⍕⍳2',⍞←⌽".",⍕3       # got dimension of '1 2'
⍴'⍞←⌽".",⍕⍴⍕⍳2',⍞←⌽".",'3'      # 3 stringized
⍴'⍞←⌽".",⍕⍴⍕⍳2',⍞←⌽'.3'         # '.' and '3' concatenated
⍴'⍞←⌽".",⍕⍴⍕⍳2',⍞←'3.'          # '.3' reversed
⍴'⍞←⌽".",⍕⍴⍕⍳2','3.'            # '3.' printed
⍴'⍞←⌽".",⍕⍴⍕⍳23.'               # '⍞←⌽".",⍕⍴⍕⍳2' and '3.' concatenated
14                              # got dimension of '⍞←⌽".",⍕⍴⍕⍳23.'
                                # finally, '14' printed

Answer 54

PowerShell, 19 bytes

+''[0],0xe-join'.'

The third character is the non-printable control char ETX, ascii code 3. Hex dump:

Offset(h) 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 0A 0B 0C 0D 0E 0F
00000000  2B 27 03 27 5B 30 5D 2C 30 78 65 2D 6A 6F 69 6E  +'.'[0],0xe-join
00000010  27 2E 27                                         '.'

This feels like cheating. I did have to use a '3' after all in the hex editor. Personally, I don't think an answer requiring the use of a hex editor should be allowed. If your language supports escaping non-printable chars, fine, but if it can't be copy/pasted from here, I don't think it should be allowed, JMO.

---

PowerShell, 20 bytes

+'ಎ'[0]-replace2,'.'

---

PowerShell, 21 bytes

(5..2)[2],0xe-join'.'

---

PowerShell, 22 bytes

(-6..20)[9,20]-join'.'

• Array from -6 to 20
• Indexes 9 and 20 grab 3 and 14
• Join on dot (.)

---

PowerShell, 24 bytes

[int]'ಎ'[0]-replace2,'.'

• 'ಎ' is a string with the unicode char 3214
• 'ಎ'[0] gets the char
• [int]'ಎ'[0] casts to an int with value 3214
• -replace converts 3214 to a string and swaps the 2 for a dot (.)

Answer 55

C 71

int main(){printf("%d.%d%d",strlen("***"),strlen("*"),strlen("****"));}

Answer 56

Java 41 / 83 characters

System.out.println((int)''+"."+(int)'');

Unfortunately copy pasting directly into the IDE from here might not work. The characters inside the '' don't show correctly here, but they are essentially variations on the space ASCII character with the decimal values 3 and 14. Below a full compilable version;

class C{public static void main(String[]a){System.out.println((int)''+"."+(int)'');}}

Answer 57

ksh 19

echo ${#0}.$((0xe))
3.14

Answer 58

Brainfuck - 39

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

Note that + and - are not arithmetic operators.

Answer 59

Python 3, 45 bytes

a=str(ord("ĺ"))
print("%s.%s"%(a[0],a[True:]))

(Had to use True to get around the restriction on the digit 1...)

Answer 60

Python 2, 40

Doesn't bend the rules at all.

print('%i\b.%i'%(ord(' '),ord('î'))[:-1]

Extended ASCII ftw. Shame I couldn't put \b at the end of my string and remove the ()[:-1]...

~-~!, also 40

'=~~,~~~~~,~~~~~:@'+~:@'-~~~~:@'-~:@'+~~

Answer 61

Object disoriented - 72 characters

dmain.ozozososozozososozozosozosososozozozososozozozosozozososozosozozzz

Boring answer, but the most compact I've achieved.

Answer 62

T-SQL, 36

This entry assumes CHECKSUM() is allowed.

PRINT STUFF(CHECKSUM('2~2'),2,2,'.')

Try the SELECT version in SQL Server 2012 here.

Answer 63

TinyMUSH, 16

This entry assumes decrypt() is allowed.

\decrypt(A<?B,.)