The Letter A without A

Question

Your task is to display the letter "A" alone, without anything else, except any form of trailing newlines if you cannot avoid them, doing so in a program and/or snippet. Code that returns (instead of printing) is allowed.

Both the lowercase and uppercase versions of the letter "A" are acceptable (that is, unicode U+0061 or unicode U+0041. Other character encodings that aren't Unicode are allowed, but either way, the resulting output of your code must be the latin letter "A", and not any lookalikes or homoglyphs)

You must not use any of the below characters in your code, regardless of the character encoding that you pick:

• "A", whether uppercase or lowercase.

• "U", whether lowercase or uppercase.

• X, whether uppercase or lowercase.

• +

• &

• #

• 0

• 1

• 4

• 5

• 6

• 7

• 9

Cheating, loopholes, etc, are not allowed.

Since this is code-golf, the shortest solution, in bytes, that follows all the rules, is the winner.

---

Validity Checker

This Stack Snippet checks to make sure your code doesn't use the restricted characters. It might not work properly for some character encodings.

var t = prompt("Input your code.");

if (/[AaUuXx+&#0145679]/.test(t)) {
  alert("Contains a disallowed character!");
} else {
  alert("No disallowed characters");
}

This Stack Snippet that makes sure you don't have a disallowed character is also available on JSFiddle.

Leaderboard

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body{text-align:left!important}#answer-list,#language-list{padding:10px;width:290px;float:left}table thead{font-weight:700}table td{padding:5px}

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Answer 1

Pluso, 1 byte

o

Pluso Esolangs Page.

Pluso contains a single accumulator, that starts with the value 1. It uses two commands, p which increments the accumulator (mod 27), and o which prints the current value as an uppercase ASCII character, A-Z or space (where 1-26 represents A-Z respectively, and 0 represents space).

As the accumulator starts at 1, the command o with no prior p will output A.

Answer 2

Python 2, 14 bytes

print`3<3`[~3]

The expression 3<3 gives the Boolean False, and the backticks give its string representation 'False'. From here, it remains to extract the letter a. Python is 0-indexed, so the a is at index 1, which is a banned character. It can be expressed as 3-2, but there's a shorter way. Python allows indexing from the back, with index -1 for the last entry, -2 for the one before it, and so on. We want index -4, but 4 is also a banned number. But, we can express it as ~3 using the bit-complement ~, which gives -n-1 for ~n.

Answer 3

Pyth, 2 bytes

hG

Test it in the Pyth Compiler.

How it works

 G  Yield the lowercase alphabet.
h   Extract the first character.

Answer 4

PHP, 9 6 bytes

<?=O^_^Q;

For 9 bytes: Inspired by @Ton Hospel's answer. Plus, it has the added benefit of looking a bit like a Kaomoji. :-)

The 6 bytes improved version:

<?=~¾;

wherein ¾ has the hex code of 0xBE (it is important to save the file in Latin-1 encoding, not UTF-8!).

Answer 5

05AB1E, 3 2 bytes

Th

Explanation

T   # push 10
 h  # convert to hex

Try it online

Saved 1 byte thanks to Adnan

Answer 6

JavaScript (ES6), 17 16 14 bytes

Saved two bytes thanks to Neil!

_=>` ${-_}`[2]

Returns the second character of NaN, which is a.

This is the shortest I could come up with for A, 43 42 bytes:

_=>`${[][`constr${`${!_}`[2]}ctor`]}`[-~8]

Who says being an obfuscator doesn't help with code golf? Not I!

Explanations

The first one, in depth.

_=>` ${-_}`[2]

-_ is NaN, because _ is undefined. To get this as a string, one would need one of the following:

-_+""
`${-_}`
(-_).toString()

The last is too long, and the first uses +. So we use the second one. Now, the a is at index 1. This isn't any good, because 1 is forbidden. However, being a template string, we can put a space in there to make it at index 2, thus leaving us with ` ${-_}`.

---

The second one, in depth.

_=>`${[][`constr${`${!_}`[2]}ctor`]}`[-~8]

This one was a doozy.

_=>`                                `[-~8]

This is the 9th character of the inside template string, -~8 being equal to 9. In this case, this template string is just for stringification. This is the inside equation being stringified, in between ${...}:

[][`constr${`${!_}`[2]}ctor`]

Let's expand this a bit:

(new Array())[`constr${`${!_}`[2]}ctor`]

This gets the property `constr${${!""}[2]}ctor` from an empty array. This property is, of course, a template string, but it has some text around it. It's roughly equivalent to:

"constr" + `${!_}`[2] + "ctor"

The inside is in turn equivalent to:

(!_).toString()[2]

!_ is true (because _ is undefined, and !undefined === true), and stringified is "true". We get the second character of it, u; we have to get it this way to avoid explicitly putting u in our code.

So, this inside bit is equivalent to:

"constr" + "u" + "ctor" === "constructor"

So we are getting the constructor of the Array, the Array function. I couldn't put this down explicitly because it contains the forbidden A. Now, stringifying the Array function yields "function Array() { [native code] }".

Back to the original code:

_=>`${[][`constr${`${!_}`[2]}ctor`]}`[-~8]

This is equivalent to, as we've seen:

_=>Array.toString()[-~8]

Equivalent to:

_=>Array.toString()[9]

Finally equivalent to:

_=>"A"

Answer 7

brainfuck, 16 bytes

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

This is based on Esolang's brainfuck algorithm for 159.

Try it online!

Answer 8

Hexagony, 4 bytes

Ayyy lmao? Quite golfy for a non-golfing language haha. Code:

B(;@

Try it online!

A more readable form:

 B (
; @ .
 . .

This puts the ASCII value of the letter B, which is 66, on the current memory edge. It substracts it by one using ( and prints it with ;. After that, the program is terminated using @.

Obligatory path image:

Answer 9

Jelly, 3 bytes

ØWḢ

Try it online!

How it works

ØWḢ  Main link. No arguments.

ØW   Yield "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789_".
  Ḣ  Head; extract the first character.

---

Jelly, 4 bytes

l-ṾṂ

Try it online!

How it works

l-ṾṂ  Main link. No arguments.

l-    Take the logarithm of 0 with base -1. Yields (nan+infj).
  Ṿ   Uneval; yield the string representation, i.e., "nanıinf".
   Ṃ  Take the minimum, returning 'a'.

Answer 10

Actually, 2 bytes

úF

Try it online!

Explanation:

úF
ú   lowercase English alphabet
 F  first element

Answer 11

CJam, 3 bytes

'@)

Try it online!

How it works

'@   Push the character '@' on the stack.
  )  Increment its code point, yielding 'A'.

Answer 12

Bubblegum, 1 byte

"

or

B

Everyone seemed to forget it existed...

Answer 13

Perl, 9 8 bytes

xor is still allowed, but say isn't. So for 9 bytes:

print$/^K

However using output to STDERR gives 8 bytes:

die~"\x9e\xf5"

Replace \x9e and \xf5 by their literal versions. Or generate the executable file using:

perl -e 'printf q(die~"%s"),~"a\n"' > a.pl

Answer 14

><>, 6 bytes

'|;o-$

this creates a string of characters, bounces and creates it again in reverse, flips the top 2 stack items and subtracts: '|' (124) minus ';' (59) is 'A' (65)

Try it online

Answer 15

Ruby, 15 12 bytes

$><<to_s[-3]

Answer 16

Java, 55 bytes

void f(){System.err.write('c'-2);System.err.println();}

Since the code has to print it, one of the two built-in writers are required. System.out is, well, out, because it contains u. System.err works, however.

The next hurdle is Java's handling of char and int. Since it is not allowed to cast to char because it contains a, and because 'c' - 2 gets promoted to int, another mechanism is required. System.err is a PrintWriter, which has a write(char) method but not write(int). Putting 'c' - 2 in there forces it to char without a cast.

Finally, every time I ran the program the buffer for System.err would not flush like it is supposed to, and the program printed nothing. So I had to flush it manually. However, System.err.flush() is not allowed, so I called println() which implicitly flushes the underlying stream.

Answer 17

MATL, 5 bytes

YNVH)

Try it Online

Explanation

YN      % Creates a NaN value (not a number)
V       % Convert it to a string
H)      % Grab the second letter ('a')
        % Implicitly display the result

---

My original answer was the straight forward approach using the pre-defined literal lY2 which yields 'A'...'Z' and then selecting the first element, 'A'.

lY2l)

Answer 18

Javascript, 18 bytes 16 bytes 12 bytes 11 bytes

` ${!2}`[2]

Based on modified jsfuck basics (had to figure out how to replace + with -).

Ungolfed?

Well, at least a version with comments (note that this version will probably not run):

` ${      // whitespace to make "a" the third letter
  !2      // returns false
}`        // convert to string "false"
[2]       // index the third letter in " false" (note the whitespace)

Old solution:

`${![]}`[-(-!![])]

Answer 19

><>, 7 4 bytes

Saved 3 bytes thanks to Teal pelican

"-o.

Try it online!

Explanation

"-o."   # pushes the string "-o."
-       # subtracts the charcode of o from the charcode of . (dot), 111-46=65
o       # prints as character
.       # tries to pop 2 coordinates to jump to, but as nothing is left on the stack
        # the program ends in an error

Answer 20

Vim, 16 13 11 10 keystrokes

Thanks to H Walters for saving two keys

Thanks to DJMcMayhem for saving another!

:h%<cr>jvyZZp

:h%<cr> #open help for percent
jvy     #move down one char (to the letter "a"), visual mode the character, yank
ZZ      #exit help for percent
p       #put yanked character

Answer 21

R, 27 12 bytes

EDIT : New version, from an excellent idea from @Jarko Dubbeldam

LETTERS[T*T]

---

Quite a funny challenge !

Basically, this takes the 26th element of the reversed vector containing the uppercase letters (LETTERS, which is a R's built-in vector)

Previous versions (same number of bytes) :

L=LETTERS;rev(L)[length(L)]
rev((L=LETTERS))[length(L)]

Answer 22

Vim, 2 Keystrokes

vim -u NONE then run the following (-u NONE turns off customization)

i<up>

When vim is run in compatible mode the arrow keys are don't get interpreted properly. <up> gets interpreted <esc>OA which leave the following in insert mode. Which would leave (with a couple of trailing newlines)

A

i starts insert mode.
<up> exits insert mode, opens a line above and enters A into the buffer

Example of people encountering this in the wild. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6987317/while-moving-the-cursor-across-a-vim-process-open-in-a-tmux-session-every-now-a/6988748#6988748

Answer 23

JavaScript (ES6), 21 bytes

_=>(8^2).toString(22)

I originally tried converting false to string to do this, but it took me 23 bytes at the time. I've since come up with a shorter way, which is this for 14 bytes:

_=>`!${!2}`[2]

I don't think you can get an uppercase A under the rules, since you need one of String.fromCharCode or .toUpperCase(), both of which contain a.

Answer 24

Haskell, 10 bytes

As a function (or rather a statement as no input is required)

f=pred 'B'

does the trick. Try it on Ideone. A full program is impossible as this would need to contain a main.

Answer 25

Brainfuck, 192 19 bytes

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

Thanks to @NinjaBearMonkey for helping me save hella bytes

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------.

I'm not good at Brainfuck so I'm sure theres a shorter solution, but it works by decrementing below 0, rolling the byte over, and keep going until it gets down to 'A', then it prints.

Answer 26

C, (19?) 24 bytes

Thanks to Dennis:

f(){printf("%c",88-23);}

same length:

f(){printf("%c",'C'-2);}

which enables also lowercase:

f(){printf("%c",'c'-2);}

There is a 19 bytes solution as a function modifying its parameter, which has a flaw:

g(int*p){*p='C'-2;}

//Usage:

main(){
  int c; //cannot be char
  g(&c);
  printf("%c\n",c);
}

If c was declared char, g modifies the whole int so it smashes the stack which causes other values to be modified or the programm to abort with an error message. The only way to circumvent is to declare int c; in main and print with "%c", but that feels like a loophole.

older solutions

f(){printf("%c",'B'-2/2);} //26 bytes
f(i){i='B';printf("%c",--i);} //29 bytes
f(){int*i="B";int j[]={*i-(2/2),2-2};printf("%s",j);} //53 bytes

Just a function, since main is forbidden.

Answer 27

Lua, 36 bytes

This one took me a while since MANY of the standard Lua functions are taken away from the rules (all of math, string.char, string.match, pairs, even next)

This takes advantage of the fact that Lua has a global _VERSION that usually starts with "Lua" (e.g., Lua 5.1, or similar for other versions), so unless this is run on a non-mainstream interpreter, the third character will be an 'a'

print(({_VERSION:find("..(.)")})[3])

The {...}[3] is to group the results of find which also includes the indices where it matched, and then return the third item which is the matched character (the a)

Answer 28

Cubix, 5 bytes

o'@)^

Try in the online interpreter!

Cubix is a language where (as the name implies) everything is executed on the faces of a cube. This code maps to the following cube:

  o
' @ ) ^
  .

The basic idea of this answer is to get a nearby character and increment it to what we need. In Cubix, @ is the exit command needed to terminate the program, but also conveniently right under 'A' in the ASCII table. This means we can use the character once to mean two different things, saving bytes - here's the order in which the code is run:

• '@ pushes the character code 64 to the stack.
• ) increments the top of stack, yielding the desired character.
• ^ sends the instruction pointer north, wrapping around to...
• o outputs the top of stack, A.
• @ terminates the program.

Answer 29

Sesos, 3 bytes

The code contains two unprintable characters, so here is a hexdump:

0000000: a85a0d                                            .Z.

Try it online! (Note that this uses the assembly code, which TIO converts to the binary above as an intermediate step. The binary is shown as a debug message.)

It is generated from this assembly program:

add 65
put

Answer 30

Brachylog, 4 bytes

@Ztw

Try it online!

Explanation

@Z      The string "zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcba"
  tw    Write the last element to STDOUT

Answer 31

dc, 4 bytes

833P

UCHAR_MAX overflow rolls through the table six three times before landing at 65.

Answer 32

Mathematica, 16 bytes

First@WordList[]

WordList[] gives a list of common English words. First takes the first element of this list, which is "a".

Answer 33

R, 11 bytes

el(LETTERS)

el(LETTERS) is equivalent to LETTERS[[1]].

Try it online!

Answer 34

Powershell v5, 13 12 11 bytes

"$(!2)"[$?]

Thanks to krontogiannis for saving me a byte.

Old 12 byte solution.

"$(!$?)"[$?]

Explanation:

"$(!$?)"[$?]
    $?        #returns the status of the last command, in this case, the call to this PS file
   !          #false operator
 $(   )       #runs the code in between () even while its in between ""
"      "      #converts to string
        [$?]  #returns index 1 (true) of the preceding string (1 is forbidden)

I don't have any earlier versions easily available to test on right now, but this should work back to v2 at least.

Answer 35

Labyrinth, 6 5 bytes

833.@

Explanation

833     # push 833 to stack
    .   # print modulo 256 as byte
     @  # exit

Try it online

Saved 1 byte thanks to Martin Ender.

Answer 36

Pure Bash, 23

r=({Y..b})
echo ${r[8]}

Creates this array and displays the 8th member:

Y Z [  ] ^ _ ` a b

Answer 37

Deadfish~, 8 bytes

iiisdsic

The only difference from regular Deadfish is that it uses c, which outputs the accumulator as a character instead of an integer.

Explanation

• increment 3 times (3)
• square (9)
• decrement (8)
• square (64)
• increment (65)
• Output as a character ("A")

Answer 38

dc, 8 7 bytes

-1B thanks to Dennis

88 23-P

Pushes 88, pushes 23, subtracts, leaving 65. Print top of stack (65) as an ASCII string, sans trailing newline.

Edit:

These are a few of the other ways I came up with. It basically became a game of "generate the numbers 65 and 97 using only [238B-F] and without addition". Ironically, I find the longest ones most interesting.

_Fdd/r-oC 2-n  # involves changing the base
2_2/8d*3*2/-P
Idd2/2/-2*on   # also changes base
2d8r^r_2/-P
8d*2_2/-P
B 3d**2-P
33 3*2-P

Answer 39

VBA, 12 bytes

?Chr(88-23);

in the VBA Immediate window.

Answer 40

Dyalog APL, 12 bytes

⊃⎕DR/88-8 23

Equivalent to 80⎕DR65

Answer 41

Commodore 64 BASIC, 6 bytes

2?"♠"

There's a non-printing character after the first quotation mark, with byte value 14.

How this works: The Commodore 64 has two character sets: "shifted mode" (which contains the full upper- and lower-case alphabet, and the startup "unshifted mode", which contains the upper-case alphabet and a selection of symbols. The "spade" symbol in unshifted mode has the same byte value as uppercase "A" in shifted mode, so if you switch modes before printing out a "♠", you get the letter "A" instead.

The question now becomes: what's the most efficient way of switching modes? The "approved" method is POKE 53272,23, but that's rather long for code golf. There's a control character (byte value 14) that switches to shifted mode, but you can't type it in directly, and ?CHR$(14) is still rather long. Further, both of these contain disallowed characters, and working around that would expand them quite a bit.

You can cut it down to a single byte, though, by combining it with the code to print out the "A". The Commodore has no memory protection, so after typing in a proxy program (I used 2?"Q♠"), you can modify the in-memory representation to replace the "Q" with byte value 14. For a freshly-started C64, POKE 2055,14 will do the job.

Answer 42

TI-Basic, 14 Bytes

:ClrHome
:Disp "Ans
:Output(1,2,"  

Note the two trialing spaces at the end of line 3.

• TI-Basic has its own character encoding where many commands are 1 or 2-byte tokens. For example, ClrHome is a single byte. Ans is a single byte, so it does not violate the challenge rules.

---

Cheat version, 3 bytes

:"a

In this code, use the a from the statistic menu: VARS > 5 > Right Arrow > Right Arrow > 2.

Answer 43

JavaScript, 21

Capital A because there seems to be no other solution to find a capital A

_=>`${[].keys()}`[8]

`${[].keys}` => "[object Array Iterator]" 8th index is A

_=>`${keys}`[38]

Also works in browser for similar reasons.

Edited to add function

Answer 44

!@#$%^&*()_+, 3 bytes

`^@

Try it online! Outputs lowercase.

Shortest for A seems to be 5 bytes: >^^^@ or B_^_@.

Explanation

`^@
`     push the character "`"
 ^    increment (to `a`)
  @   output as character

Answer 45

Keg, 3 2 bytes

B;

This pushes the ASCII character B onto the stack, and then decrements the value by 1. The value will automatically be printed.

Answer 46

International Phonetic Esoteric Language, 8 bytes (WIP language)

2<C>ʀdχo

The wonders of abusing Unicode as your instruction set.

No TIO interpreter yet, but is runnable by cloning the repository above, and calling python main.py "code here".

2<C>ʀdχo
2        ; push 2
 <C>     ; push "C"
    ʀ    ; pop, push ord("C")
     d   ; pop, push 67 - 2
      χ  ; pop, push chr(65)
       o ; pop, print string

Answer 47

Jolf, 3 bytes

Fpl

Try it here!

First (F) of the lowercase alphabet (pl).

---

Are you tired of verifying your code manually? Use this!

---

Another one for three bytes:

~TS

This is the hexadecimal char code of a newline (0x0A)

Answer 48

reticular, 9 bytes

"C"c2-co;

Try it online!

This is basically C converted from a char to a char code, subtracting two, converting back to a char, printing it with o, then finally terminating it with ;.

Answer 49

C++14, 30 bytes

As unnamed lambda (allowed in Python):

[](decltype('B')*c){*c='C'-2;} //'c'-2 for lowercase

//Usage:
#include <iostream>
main(){
  char c;
  [](decltype('B')*c){*c='C'-2;}(&c);
  std::cout << c << std::endl;
}

33 bytes

Function that assigns to its parameter:

int f(decltype('B')*c){*c='C'-2;}

//Usage:

#include <iostream>
main(){
 char c;
 f(&c);
 std::cout << c << std::endl;
}

Pretty hard to do it otherwise since no #include, return or auto because of U. Modifying parameters for return values seems ok Meta

Answer 50

Dyalog APL, 15 bytes

{⍵::2⌷⊃⎕DM⋄⍺}⍴⍬

The straightforward options are all banned: both ⎕AV (APL character set vector) and ⎕UCS (Unicode conversion) contain banned characters.

It gives one uppercase A:

      {⍵::2⌷⊃⎕DM⋄⍺}⍴⍬
A

Explanation:

• {...}⍴⍬: pass 0 (length of empty vector) into the function
• ⍵::: trap the error with code ⍵, which will be 0. A trap on 0 means to trap all errors.
• 2⌷⊃⎕DM: the 2nd character of the first line of the error message
• ⋄⍺: try to return the value of the left argument. There isn't one, so this will raise a VALUE ERROR, which the A is then extracted from.

Answer 51

PHP, 14 bytes

<?=chr(88-23);

88 - 23 = 65, the ASCII value of A. 8, 2, and 3 are the only legal digits to use, and - is allowed.

Answer 52

Java 9 jshell, 18 bytes

printf("%c",'C'-2)

jshell is a Java REPL that comes with Java 9.

Answer 53

Mathematica, 27 25 bytes

Writes 10 in base 24. Half the length is one function name :(

IntegerString[2(8-3),3*8]

Thanks to Xavier for pointing out that the base doesn't have to be 16 (as in my original hexadecimal solution)!

Answer 54

Brachylog, 7 bytes

@P:33mw

Try it online!

Explanation

@P is the following string:

 !"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{|}~

(the first character is a space)

And its 33rd element is the required letter A.

@P:33mw
@P        generate the string above
  :33     append the number 33, yielding ["...",33]
     m    pass the array as Input of m, and the
          required character becomes the Output
      w   recycles the right argument of the previous
          predicate as the left argument, and then
          prints to STDOUT

Answer 55

SMBF, 4 bytes

<-.B

Try it Online!

Explanation:

<-    Wrap pointer around to the "B" and decrement it, giving "A"
  .   Print
   B  Data storage

Answer 56

Pyke, 2 bytes

Gh

Try it here!

Gh - alphabet[0]

Answer 57

Python 3, 18 17 bytes

print(chr(88-23))

Prints the Unicode value 0x41 = 65 - credit SnoringFrog

Previous answers

print(str(int)[3])

Prints index 3 (the fourth character) of the string "<class 'int'>":

print(chr(33*3-2))

Prints the Unicode value 0x61 = 97

Answer 58

Bash, 19 17 bytes

Prints lower-case a:

printf \\$[282/2]

(Thanks to Dennis for reminding me of the deprecated syntax)

Answer 59

Octave, 13 11 8 bytes

Didn't expect to golf this answer down, but wohoo, a bug(?) in Octave made it possible to save two bytes! :) Converting this to a "full program", instead of a function saves an additional three bytes, leaving us with 8 bytes:

['',833]

['',833] concatenates the empty string with the number 883. The ASCII code for A is 65, so 883 might seem a bit odd. I think this must be a bug, but what Octave does when concatenating an empty string and a number is that it takes the number modulus 256. mod(883, 256) == 65 which just so happens to be the ASCII code for A.

Octave does not do this when using the "proper" method, char(883), in which case we will get:

warning: range error for conversion to character value

Answer 60

Fission, 5 bytes

R'B_O

Try it online!

How it works

R      Spawn an atom that moves to the right.
 'B    Set the atom's mass to 'B'.
   _   Decrement the atom's mass.
    O  Print the character that corresponds to the atoms mass and destroy the atom.

Answer 61

Retina, 8 bytes

M`
T`O`L

Try it online!

Explanation

M`

This counts the number of matches of the empty regex in the empty input, so it produces a 1.

T`O`L

This is a transliteration which substitutes characters from the first set with corresponding characters from the second set. However, O and L are shorthands which expand to the odd digits and the upper case alphabet, respectively, so this replaces the 1 with A.

Answer 62

PHP, 12 bytes

<?=chr(833);

Due to an overflow the above produces an 'A' (see example 2 of the PHP doc).

Answer 63

Groovy, 12 bytes

print(--'B')

Makes use of the decrement operator overloading on Strings, per CharSequence.previous().

Answer 64

R 3.2.2, 34 32 bytes

This is a tricky challenge in R, since the only function that will print without quotes and junk is cat, which contains an "a". We have to get it by indirect means. In a fresh R installation with no extra packages, the base package (in which cat resides) is the eighth in the search list (luckily 8 isn't prohibited!)

cat is the 297th thing in the base package, but 9 and 7 are prohibited. I think 322-23-2 is the most efficient way to calculate 297, but I may be wrong!

(Edit: I was wrong. Thanks to Albert Masclans for pointing out that 33*3*3 is more efficient. I also added the R version number since later versions of R will probably introduce more things into the base package.)

"a" is held in the first element of letters (alternatively, use LETTERS if you want "A") but since 1 is prohibited, we use 3-2 to get it.

    get(ls(8)[33*3*3])(letters[3-2])

Answer 65

Bash, 14 bytes

tr P-R @-B<<<Q

Output:

A

Answer 66

DC, 6 bytes

3BFFvP

...spits out an A and nothing else.

Answer 67

JavaScript ES6 ES5, 23 17 12

12 bytes

`${!3}`[3-2]

17 bytes: (typeof!3)[2- -3]

23 bytes: _=()=>(typeof!3)[2- -3]

Edit 05/10/2016: Took advantage of templating strings, as well as boolean coercion and string/array indexing... Also realized my previous code used +, I could always salvage 2+3 as 2- -3 at a cost of 2 bytes for each previous example... (Updated code and scores for previous submissions)

Edit 30/08/2016:

I took a different approach, exploiting the fat arrow functions as well as the typeof return type, which is a string. So converting a number to a boolean was easier then, had to encase it in parentheses before pulling the 5th element of the resulting string...

Seems that there was no mention of my answer requiring to be in the form of a function, so I've just stripped the fat arrow function declaration.

Answer 68

Vim, 6 bytes

grNg??

Challenge doesn't block N, and Vim has a ROT-13 feature. FDinoff's answer is probably cooler, but this is ASCII and works everywhere.

Answer 69

Vim, 19 bytes (not competing)

:redi@"|Ni!<CR>pJd3w~D

Do you demand a shrubbery?

Answer 70

Piet, 30 codels

I'm sure that this can be improved, but I'm a bit of a Piet newbie.

Side note: I have titled it Icy Toll Gate to a Nether Portal. It's artistic, but not abstract, so it kind of follows the main design principle!

Answer 71

Japt, 3 bytes

Any of these 3-byte programs work:

;Bg
;Cg
;Hd

Test it online!

How it works

;      Set B to the uppercase alphabet,
           C to the lowercase alphabet,
       and H to 65, among other things.
 Bg    Take the first char of B.
 Hd    Take the character with charcode H.
       Implicitly output.

Any of these 4-byte programs work as well:

;EgG
;EgI
;FgG
;FgH
°I d
IÄ d

Answer 72

Java 7, 73 69 bytes

Golfed:

void m(){System.err.println(new Object().toString().split("")[3-2]);}

Ungolfed:

void m()
{
    System.err.println(new Object().toString().split("")[3 - 2]);
}

Outputs a to the standard error.

Answer 73

Chicken, 495 bytes

chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken
chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken
chicken chicken chicken chicken
chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken
chicken chicken
chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken

You have to copy and paste the code but you can try it online.

Answer 74

Braingolf, 7 bytes

"C"2-@;

Try it online!

Screw you @totallyhuman :(

Explanation

It subtracts 2 from C and prints.

Braingolf, 12 bytes

Keeping this one because IMO it's the better answer, and took way more effort to do.

/..*3*<2*-@;

Try it online!

Man, this was hard.

Explanation

/..*3*<2*-@;
/             Niladic division, push 5 [5]
 ..           Duplicate twice          [5,5,5]
   *          Multiply last 2 items    [5,25]
    3         Push 3                   [5,25,3]
     *        Multiply by 3            [5,75]
      <       Left-shift stack         [75,5]
       2      Push 2                   [75,5,2]
        *     Multiply last 2 items    [75,10]
         -    Subtract last 2 items    [65]
          @   Print as character, 65 is the ASCII value of A
           ;  Suppress implicit output

Braingolf, 9 bytes

And here's a shorter one that still uses the "calculate 65" method

/82*3-*@;

Try it online!

Explanation

Uses niladic division for 5, calculates 13 from (8 * 2) - 3, then multiplies 5 and 13 to make 65

Braingolf, 11 bytes

And finally here's one that prints a lowercase a.

*v/2*c/3-@;

Try it online!

Explanation

*v/2*c/3-@;
*            Niladic multiply, push 1000 [1000]
 v           Switch to stack2            []
  /          Niladic division, push 5    [5]
   2*        Double                      [10]
     c       Collapse stack into stack1  [1000,10]
      /      Divide last 2 items         [100]
       3-    Subtract 3                  [97]
         @;  Print as ASCII and suppress implicit output
             97 is the ASCII value of a

Answer 75

Woefully, 335 bytes

|||||||| |
||||||| |
|||||| |
||||| |
|||| |
||| |
|| |
| | --push5; A[5], B[]
| |
| |
| |
| |
| | -- dupeA2B; A[5], B[5]
|| |
||| |
|||| |
||||| |
|||||| |
||||||| | -- swap dec/ascii (set to ascii)
|||||| |
||||| |
|||| |
||| |
|| | --push3; A[5,3], B[5]
|| |
|| | --popA2B; A[5], B[5, 3]
||| |
||| |
||| |
||| |
||| | --multiply; A[15], B[5]
|||| |
|||| |
||||| |
|||| |
||| |
|| |
| | --push2; A[15, 2], B[5]
| |
| | --popA2B; A[15], B[5, 2]
|| |
|| |
|| |
|| | --sub; A[13], b[5]
| |
| |
| |
| |
| | --multiply; a[65], b[]
|| |
||| |
|||| |
||||| |
|||||| | --print; OUTPUT; "A"
|||||| | --no op ends program

Try it online!

I've added the explanation of each step at the end of the step.

Answer 76

JavaScript (ES8), 12 bytes

`e${-{}}`[2]

This evaluates to:

"eNaN"[2]

which is "a".

Answer 77

Pushy, 2 bytes

ZQ

Try it online!

Z          \ Push 0
 Q         \ Index into 0-indexed uppercase alphabet, print result

Answer 78

x86 MS-DOS, 10 bytes

b4 02 mov ah,0x2
b2 40 mov dl,0x40
fe c2 inc dl
cd 21 int 0x21
cd 20 int 0x20

Try yourself

echo "B402B240FEC2CD21CD20" | xxd -r -p > TEST.COM

Answer 79

Powershell, 11 bytes

" $(!2)"[2]

Every non-0 integer evaluates to True when casted to [bool].
!2 implicitly converts 2 to [bool] and negates it, so it becomes False.
$() blocks inside a string allow expressions to be evaluated before being converted to string.
When accessing a string with an index the string is treated as a char-array.
Since we're not allowed to use 1 i had to use a space to shift the a in False one to the right. Another option would be a negative index: "$(!2)"[-4].

Answer 80

Pascal (FPC), 26 bytes

begin write(pred('B'))end.

Try it online!

At first, I wanted to use standard 88-23 approach, but luckily, there is the pred() which returns previous element of an ordinal type (integers, characters and enumerated types).

Answer 81

Kotlin, 7 bytes

{'C'-2}

This is a lambda that returns the Char A. Char overloads the minus operator. Since C is 2 characters after A in Unicode, 'C'-2 produces A.

Try it online!

Answer 82

Lenguage, 62,544,587,333,324 bytes

Unary, 134,032,404,790,876 bytes

^{I couldn't resist ;)}

Programs consists of 62544587333324 and 134032404790876 times the character B (or any allowed character you choose to). (Actually pretty short for Lenguage/Unary..)

Port of @Dennis♦' Brainfuck answer.

Byte-counts generated by this program I wrote in 05AB1E.

Answer 83

Java 8, 9 bytes

()->'C'-2

-31 (!) bytes thanks to ASCII-only!
Try it online!

How?
I'm not sure. Best guess is the result of the subtraction is implicitly cast to char because of the return type of the function.

Answer 84

Python 3, 18 bytes

print(str(int)[3])

Prints a lowercase a.

Explanation

Typing int into the interpreter gives <class 'int'>. The 4th character is an a, therefore we can convert it into a string and print the character at index 3.

Answer 85

MATL, 5 Bytes

'b'qc

Try it online!

Answer 86

SQF, 30 15

Using the function-as-a-file format:

toString[88-23]

Call as: call FUNCTION

Finally a challenge where SQF can compete. Not win, but actually competing is nice.

Answer 87

3var, 14 11 8 bytes

iii       # set A to 3
   s      # square A to 9
    d     # decrease A to 8
     s    # square A to 64
      i   # increment A to 65
       P  # print A as ascii

Try it online

Saved 3 bytes thanks to Joffan.

Answer 88

Pyth - 3 bytes

Alternate longer answer.

.HT

Try it online here.

Answer 89

Snowman, 14 bytes

{8vn2nPNiNwRsp

Explanation

{               # activate bdg
 8              # set b to 8
  vn            # no-op
    2           # set d to 2
     nP         # set b to 8^2=64
       NiN      # set b to b+1 = 65
          wR    # wrap in array
            sp  # print

Try it online

Answer 90

Ruby, 17 bytes

print (88-23).chr

Thanks to Dennis for the expression, a big improvement over 23*8/2-3*8-3, my first idea.

Answer 91

Lua, 36 bytes

_,_,y=type{}:find(".(.)")io.write(y)

Explanation:

• type{} is equivalent to type({}) and returns the string "table" with the desired 'a'.
• string.find's very infrequently-used 3rd return value is the first capture from the pattern. Most of the other ways that could be used to chop up a string are forbidden by the alphabet restrcitions.

Comments:

Alternatively, print for -3 bytes if not required to suppress the trailing newline.

I really wanted to use _VERSION to get the 'a', but type{} is shorter.

This should work in Lua 5.1-5.3. Lua 5.0 doesn't support the string metatable, so it is a bit longer.

Answer 92

Caker, 24 bytes

ωΩθΩθθθθθΩθΘ

_{Body must be at least 30 characters; you entered 29.}

Answer 93

Perl 6, 14 bytes

print 'B'.pred

pred is short for "predecessor"

Answer 94

WolframAlpha, 10 bytes

chr(88-23)

Answer 95

PHP, 15 14 bytes

(PHP7 only) Longer than others but a tricky approach :

<?=([].b)[.2];

[] instance an Array

.b cast to string = 'Array' and add any character (here b) at the end (thank you Business Cat)

[.2] : = [0] take first letter (A)

Answer 96

Oracle SQL 11.2, 56 50 bytes

Shorter way to compute 65, thanks to the previous answers using it.

SELECT NVL(MIN('.'),CHR(88-23))FROM col WHERE 2=3;

Old version :

SELECT NVL(MIN('.'),CHR(3*3*8-2-2-3))FROM col WHERE 2=3;

Ugly, but I had to find a way around DUAL

Answer 97

Whitespace, 15 bytes

It's easy to avoid characters with a language that doesn't use any of them!

Try it online!

.               
.   
.  

The .'s are unneccessary, and are just to make the codeblock work.

For a more readable format: s = space, t = tab, newline placement matters

ssstssssst
t
ss

First line pushes (ss) positive (s) 65 (tssssst, binary 1000001) onto the stack)

Second and third lines print top of stack as char.

Answer 98

Verbosy, 13 bytes

~` /3 ^3 \3 o

Verbosy is actually a language I wrote (see the link). Hopefully that's allowed...

Explanation:

~`: set Current to the ` character.

/3: put the ` character into slot 3

^3: increment the character in slot 3 by 1

\3: put the character in slot 3 into Current

o: prints Current

Answer 99

R, 12 bytes

I was losing it until I realized I can use 2 and 3.

 LETTERS[3-2]

Answer 100

Straw, 6 bytes (non-competing)

Bæ}Æ>

Take the codepoint of B (Bæ), get the tail of the string (unary decrement) (}), take the character associated with the codepoint (Æ), and print it (>)

Try it online

Answer 101

QBasic, 17 bytes

PRINT CHR$(88-23)

Exploits the fact that the function which converts an integer to char is named CHR.

Answer 102

PowerShell, 89 59 32 Bytes:

[Convert]::ToString((8-3)*2,8*2)

$d=2-2;[char][byte]"".insert($d,(3*3)-(2*2)).insert($d,2*3) $b=[string]::Concat(2*3);$c=[string]::Concat((3*3)-(2*2));[char][byte]$b.insert(2*2-3,$c)

edit: use of a I see no way around this(not a golf language) It is possible...

Answer 103

GO, 22 20 bytes

print(string(88-23))

Try it online!

Answer 104

SmileBASIC, 10 bytes

?KEY(2)[2]

KEY accesses the function buttons used in the editor. They can be set to any string, but by default they are 1:FILES 2:LOAD" 3:SAVE" 4:LIST ERR\r 5:RUN

Answer 105

C, 20 24

Surprisingly, you can cast negative integers to characters in C and you will get ASCII characters. I ran a loop up to -10,000 and found a few values that produce the character "A". One of which was -8383 which uses no invalid characters. Another being -2239 which breaks the rule of using '9', however you can use a bit operation of ~2238 which becomes -2239.

The generation function for negative integers producing 'A', at least in C-GCC4.9.2, is 65-256*i ... The first few are -191, -447, -703, -959 (Note: this is the same as 'A'-(256*n))

---

f(){printf("%c",-8383);}

f(){printf("%c",~2238);}

f(){printf("%c",-'¿');} //¿ (2 bytes) is x00BF in unicode (or 191 in base10), -191 = A

Bonus: printf("%c",-'₿'); //negative bitcoin produces A because bitcoin symbol is x20BF which is base_10 is 8383, -8383 cast to char is 'A', but the bitcoin symbol is 3 bytes putting my score to 25 so this is my popularity contest answer, not my codegolf answer

---

Edit: I can't use putchar since it contains a "U" and an "A". I've updated the answer above to use printf and thus increased my code by 4 bytes from a score of 20 to 24

Answer 106

,,,, 6 bytes

'Co2-c

Explanation

'Co2-c

'C      push "C"                    ["C"]
  o     convert to ASCII ordinal    [67]
   2-   subtract 2                  [65]
     c  convert to ASCII character  ["A"]
        implicit output             []

Answer 107

AutoHotkey, 19 bytes

Send % Chr(8-2 8-3)

This types a single character, A. It does so through AHK's surprising yet convenient implicit concatenation.

Send tries to write a string. %tells it to use the value of an expression (Rather than just plaintext) Chr() converts a number to a character. 8-2 8-3 evaluates to 6 5 which evaluates to 65, the ASCII code for A.

Answer 108

Pyth, 3 2 bytes

-1 from Dave reminding me to actually read the docs

hG

Explanation:

hG      The first entry in G (the alphabet)

Try it online!

Answer 109

K (oK), 8 bytes

Solution:

`c$88-23

Try it online!

Explanation:

Interpretted right-to-left:

   88-23 / 88 minus 23 is 65
`c$      / cast to character ("A")

Answer 110

Acc!!, 16 11 bytes

Write 32*2-(2-3)

  Write 88-23

Write tells it to output ASCII, 32*2=64, -(-1) gives 65

I realized 88-23 also gives 65

Try it online!

Answer 111

Python, 31 bytes

print(chr(-~(2**(8-2))),end='')

Explanation: 8-2 is 6, and 2**6 (2 to the power of 6) is 64. chr(65) is A, so I need to add 1 without using + (or 1). I then used -~ which adds 1, creating chr(65) which is A.

Answer 112

MathGolf, 3 2 bytes

-1 byte thanks to maxb

╩Z

Try it online!

Fetches the 90th word in the dictionary, which is a uppercase 'A'.

Answer 113

Ahead, 6 bytes

'C2-o@

'C      push 67 (C in unicode)
  2     push 2
   -    subtract
    o   print char
     @  end

Try it online!

Answer 114

Scratch, 38 bytes

when gf clicked
think(letter(2)of<[]<[

Try it online!

think is used instead of say because say has an a.

Answer 115

MathGolf, 2 bytes

♂¢

Try it online.

Explanation:

♂     # Push 10
 ¢    # Convert to hexadecimal (and output implicitly)

Answer 116

Brian & Chuck, 7 bytes

B?
!<-.

Try it online!

code:

Brian:
B    constant B
?    switch to Chuck

Chuck:
<    go to B
-    decrement it
.    and print it

Answer 117

W d, 2 bytes

∑Ƿ

Explanation

Pretty much boils down to this after decompression:

'A

Answer 118

Wren, 41 bytes

System.write(String.fromCodePoint(88-23))

Try it online!

Answer 119

Pip, 4 bytes

/O@z

Try it online!

Explanation

   z  Lowercase alphabet
  @   First character
 O    Output without newline
/     Invert

That last (first?) instruction requires some more explanation:

By default, Pip prints the last expression in the program with a trailing newline. (This is why we couldn't do @z for 2 bytes, since the challenge states that newlines should be avoided if at all possible.) That's a problem because O@z, in addition to outputting a without a newline, is also an expression that evaluates to a. So O@z by itself would print aa plus a newline.

There are two ways to get rid of the extra output: First, we could output inside an if statement (5 bytes: IzO@z or other similar programs). Second, we could make the final expression in the program evaluate to nil. Nil produces no output when printed, not even the trailing newline. The usual way to suppress auto-printing is to end the program with u, a variable preset to nil. Unfortunately, u is banned. We could use the nil expression (), which would put us back at 5 bytes: O@z().

Enter the unary division operator /, which inverts its operand. In this case, if we invert O@z, the operand is the string a. Non-numeric strings evaluate to 0 in numeric contexts, which means we're dividing by 0. This gives nil, which suppresses the newline exactly as desired.

Answer 120

Python - 20 bytes

print(chr(-~(8<<3)))

IPython 7.11.1 - 19 bytes

print(__doc__[3^3])

Answer 121

Befunge 93, 7 bytes

"C"2-,@

Pretty simple.

Answer 122

ECMAScript 6, 41 59 55 bytes

Golfed

This is the golfed version, which doesn't support the use strict pragma. If you want to allow this to be compatible with it, simply replace s=(2-2>(3-2) with var s=(2-2)>(3-2).

Version 3 of this replaced the old substring (that uses the disallowed character u) with slice, a byte-efficient version that fits these rules.

You can try this on JSFiddle or use the below Stack Snippet.

s=(2-2)>(3-2);console.log(s.toString().slice((3-2),2));

Ungolfed

This version of golfed code (version 3) supports the use strict pragma and is 79 bytes.

You can try this on JSFiddle or use the below Stack Snippet.

"use strict";
var s = (2-2) > (3-2);
console.log(s.toString().slice((3-2), 2));

Technically, this doesn't follow the rules as it uses u and a (in use and var respectively), but it was needed to support use strict.

Answer 123

Jellyfish, 5 bytes

P;>'@

Try it online!

Answer 124

Befunge-98, 6 bytes

'Lb-,q

Very basic: 'Lb- pushes (76-11 aka 65), , prints, q quits because using @ is too boring.

Answer 125

Ruby, 20 Bytes

print ("c".ord-2).chr

Subtracts 2 from the unicode-code from "c".

Answer 126

C# Interactive (REPL), 21 bytes

(3<2).ToString()[3-2]

I really wonder how much smaller it can become in C# in a REPL environment.

Answer 127

Python 2, 16 bytes

print chr(88-23)

Simpler but longer (21 bytes):

print chr(ord('c')-2)

Answer 128

Senva, 9 bytes 4 bytes

There is two ways to write this program, let's begin by the longest :

82.8--8-~

This stores 82 in the memory, substract 8, 8 again, 1, then display the memory as an ASCII char (65 is the ASCII code of A). The cell's value is 82 - 8 - 8 - 1 = 65.

The second way is a little bit pernicious :

B_-~

This converts the 'B' character to its ASCII char code, substract 1, and then display it as an ASCII char.

Answer 129

JavaScript (ES6), Uppercase, 34 30 bytes

1. I started from the answers of Conor O'Brien to get this:

_=>this[`${` ${-$}`[2]}tob`]("QQ")

Since btoa("A") gives "QQ==", it's doing atob("QQ") wich gives "A".

2. Completing the answer of chronixlol :

_=>String.fromCodePoint(88-23)

Answer 130

Insomnia, 2 bytes

Since any character is allowed, I used an unprintable character in the code (\u001a). Hex dump included below:

0000000: 641a                                     d.

StackExchange doesn't display control characters in the post, so click on edit to see the raw source code below and copy it to test on the online interpreter:

d

Answer 131

C# Interactive (REPL), 12 bytes

Lower case:

$"_{3<2}"[2]

This works by getting the third character from the string _False.

Upper case:

$"{new{}.GetType()}"[8-3]

This creates an anonymous object and gets its type, which is always of the form <>f__AnonymousType0#9. It then turns this into a string and gets the 6th character.

Answers are given as C# Interactive to compete with the other C# answer, though they can easily be converted to a printing anonymous lambda by wrapping them with:

()=>System.Console.Write(...);

This adds 27 characters to each solution.

Answer 132

3d, 7 bytes

Don't know if competing, but still, here it is.
Program:

>'b.-!;

Output:

a

Explanation:

>        Set direction of the IP
 'b      Push Unicode ordinal of character 'b'
   .     Push digit 1
    -    Push difference
     !   Print as Unicode character
      ;  End of program

Answer 133

Javascript, 32 bytes

Uppercase A:

String.fromCodePoint(33*2-(3-2))

Answer 134

MSX-BASIC, 25 bytes

?CHR$(3*3*3*2-(-3-3-3-2))

Answer 135

MIXAL - 101 bytes including tabs

Run on your MIX machine. Or assemble and run using the GNU MIX Development Kit (http://www.gnu.org/software/mdk/).

S       ENT2    2/2
        ST2     8
        ENT3    22*2-3-2-2
        ST3     P(8-3:8-3)
        ENT2    22-3
        ST2     P(8-2-2:8-2-2)
P       IN      8
        HLT
        END     S

The biggest challenge is not being able to use OUT, the only output command, or 19, the number of the teletype output device. I get around the source restrictions by creating forbidden numbers using MIX assembler arithmetic, and by using MIX's self-modifying code features.

1. Enter the number 1 into index register 2 (assembler turns 2/2 into 1)
2. Store the contents of index register 2 at memory address 8, later to be sent to the output device
3. Enter the number 37 into index register 3 using assembler arithmetic. 37 is the operation code OUT, which we need but can't use because it has a U.
4. Store the contents of index register 3 (=37) in the opcode field (5:5) of the instruction already stored at address 'P' as part of the program (in other words, change IN to OUT)
5. Enter the number 19 into index register 2. The teletype output device is no. 19.
6. Store the contents of index register 2 (=19) in the field-specification field (4:4) of the instruction at address 'P' (change 0 to 19 to specify the teletype device as output).
7. Instruction 'P': We have now rewritten this line as P OUT 8(19). So, send the contents stored at address 8 (= 1 = character code for 'A') to the teletype device for output.
8. Stop the machine.

Answer 136

Game Maker Language, 26 bytes

So lucky that the command is chr() instead of char()...

get_string('',chr(33*3-2))

Basically, we have to get chr(65) or chr(97) to get A or a. Also, I had to use get_string to show the output since return, show_message, show_question, etc. all contained restricted characters.

Answer 137

Microscript II, 6 bytes

2s'C-K

Basically subtracts 2 from the char code of C, then converts back to a character before printing implicitly.

In the original Microscript, it becomes this 7-byte program:

2s'C-Ph

Answer 138

Kotlin, 22 bytes

{print("${3<2}"[3-2])}

This is a lambda that prints a to the console when invoked. Converts false (3<2) to string via string template and returns the 1-indexed character.

Answer 139

Ruby REPL, 11 bytes

(88-23).chr

88 - 23 = 65. 65 is the decimal representation of ASCII A. The chr function changes the decimal representation to the character. The REPL displays the result.

Answer 140

F# Interactive, 17 bytes

string(3<2).[3-2]

This produces the following in the Output:

val it : char = 'a'

to print it to STDOUT, well, it becomes larger: 29 chars.

printf"%c"<|string(3<2).[3-2]

Answer 141

Woefully, 400 bytes

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Can probably be golfed more

Answer 142

JavaScript, Node console, 23

Shortest JavaScript I can do for a capital A.

This only works in the Node REPL console.

Object.keys(this)[2][3]

This only works in Firefox REPL (27)

Object.keys(this)[8*3][2*3]

Answer 143

Elixir, 16 bytes

IO.write [88-23]

Try it online on ElixirPlayground !

Elixir outputs the character(s) with the ASCII code specified in the list.

Using IO.puts would make it 1 byte shorter, but u is not allowed.

As expected, the interactive mode removes the need of explicitly calling IO functions for on-screen output.

---

Elixir Interactive, 7 bytes

[88-23]

Answer 144

Scala, 15 bytes

((2>3)+"")(3-2)

Explanation:

( 
  (2>3) //false
  +""   //toString
)(3-2)  //zero-indexed 1st char is 'a'

Answer 145

k, 14 bytes

*|$`byte$38-28

This returns "a"

Answer 146

Forth, 19 bytes

Creates the number 65 (23*3-2-2), then outputs it as the character A.

23 3 * 2 - 2 - emit

Try it online

Answer 147

SmileBASIC, 12 bytes

Self-explanatory.

?CHR$(88-23)

Answer 148

SOGL V0.12, 2 bytes

Κ‘

Try it Here!
A simple compressed string of "A". Really it should be more than a byte (3 bits on saying that it's a character + ~6.5 bits = 8.5 bits = 1 1⁄16 bytes), but I got lucky.

Answer 149

Common Lisp, 33 bytes

(elt(string(type-of 3/2))(- 3 2))

type-of 3/2 returns the symbol RATIO, string transforms it into a string, and finally elt gets the character at index 1 (i.e. A).

Try it online!

Answer 150

Recursiva, 4 bytes

Y(L'

Try it online!

Explanation:

Y(L'
Y     - From, Take n-th element 'A'
 (    - Upper-case alphabet 'ABC...Z'  
  L   - Length of i.e. 0
   '  - empty string

Answer 151

VBA, 19 Bytes

Anonymous VBE immediate window function that takes no input and outputs A to the VBE immediate window

?Chr(-(-32-32-3)-2)

Answer 152

PHP 21 or 67 Bytes

Try it online

Kinda cheating but implode on $_SERVER just leaves a on the 8th position

<?=join($_SERVER)[8];

Else Creating an array of letter strating at chr(88) and end it at chr(33) leaves an A at position 23

<?php $u=[];for($i=88;$i>33;$i--){$u[]=chr($i);}echo join($u)[23];

Answer 153

Pepe, 10 bytes

reeEEeeeeE

Try it online!

reeEEeeeeE pushes a to stack and outputs it.

Answer 154

Japt -g, 2 bytes

;B

Test it here

Answer 155

C# (.NET Core), 44 bytes

Console.Write(Convert.ToString(33-23, 8*2));

Try it online!

Converts the decimal value 10 to its hexadecimal equivalent (a).

Answer 156

Aheui (esotope), 21 bytes

밡밤다발따맣홄

Try it online!

---

Explanation:

밡: push 9, move cursor right by 1(→).
밤: push 4, →
다: add, →
발: push 5, →
따: mul, →
맣: print as character, →
홄: end.

Answer 157

Lean Mean Bean Machine, 11 bytes

O
"
b
)
!
;

Try it online!

O Spawn a marble,
"b set it to b,
) decrement it,
! print it,
; delete it.

Due to u being disallowed, this is 2 bytes longer than it would otherwise be, as u both prints and deletes the marble.

Answer 158

J, 14 bytes

{:{:2(3!:3)5*2

Try it online!

Mostly curious if there's a better solution...

Answer 159

MBASIC, 19 bytes

2 PRINT CHR$(88-23)

I swear I came up with this solution before finding those other (similar) BASIC answers. Apparently great minds do think alike. :-)

Answer 160

AppleScript, 16

string id(88-23)

Answer 161

Number Factory, 4 bytes

%>>%

You can test it with my interpreter.

There are several coincidences that together make this as short as it is:

• The factory contains a room specifically for the output of letters.
• The encoding scheme used by that room is 1-indexed.
• The initial room contains 1.
• The initial room and the alphabetic output room are only 2 squares apart.

Answer 162

Runic Enchantments, 6 bytes

'Bl-k@

Try it online!

"length of stack" acts as a placeholder for the value 1. 'Lb-k@ and 'C2-k@ both also work and are the same number of bytes.

Answer 163

Brain-Flak, 28 bytes

(((((()()()()){}){}){}){}())

Try it online!

code:

(((((()()()()){}){}){}){}()) push 65
                             implicitly print stack

Answer 164

Keg, 1 byte (SBCS)

Ȧ

Ah, yes, restricted-source challenges. The exact thing the push'n'print feature was added to Keg for. Very simple this program: just print the letter a to output.

No, it's not cheating because it's a feature designed for all restricted source challenges. And also, Ȧ doesn't have any forbidden code points.

No TIO yet because it needs a quick update but works on the Github interpreter (just make sure to use Keg.py)

Answer 165

Julia 1.0, 12 bytes

print('d'-3)

Try it online!

Answer 166

05AB1E, 6 4 bytes

2<.b

Try it online!

Explanation

2<    # push 2 and decrement (now 1 is on the stack)
  .b  # push the [top value]th letter of the alphabet (the 1st letter)
      # implicit output

Answer 167

BBC Basic IV, 19 15 bytes

23PRINTCHR$(88-23)

Older Answer: 19 bytes

23PRINTCHR$(8^2-(2-3))

The statement...

P.TOP-PAGE

...shows the size of the program, which is 19 bytes.

Answer 168

Wenyan, 39 33 bytes (WIP language)

加陰以『』夫其之二書之

Update: Wenyan now supports 『』 in place of 「「」」 for quoting strings. (starting from v0.1.2)

Literally console.log((false+"")[2-1]) but not using any of +, a and 1

Explanation

　　　　　　　　　書之          // console.log(               )
　　　　　夫其之　　　          //             (        )[ -1]
　陰　　　　　　　　　          //              false
加　以　　　　　　　　          //                   +
　　　『』　　　　　　          //                    ""
　　　　　　　　二　　          //                        2

Note: Indexing in Wenyan is 1-based.

Answer 169

Ruby, 16 bytes

$><<[*??..?B][2]

Get's the third element in the range from '?' to 'B', which is 'A'!

Explanation

$><<[*??..?B][2]

    [*      ]     create an array containing the elements from
        ..        the inclusive range from
      ??          literal '?' character to
          ?B      literal 'B' character
                  this array is now ['?', '@', 'A', 'B']
             [2]  get the 3rd element of this array ('A')
  <<              append/write that to
$>                standard output

Try it online!

Answer 170

Brainfuck, 24 bytes

not as good as Dennis' anyones, but still posting it.

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

Answer 171

UNBABTIZED, 18 bytes

!0,88.(°0,23.:°0

!0,88. put 88 in cell 0

(°0.23. subtract 23 from cell 0

:°0 print cell 0 as character

Answer 172

Perl6, 20

(?0).comb[3>2].print

Answer 173

Visual C++, 32 bytes

std::clog<<decltype('C')('C'-2);

or

std::clog<<decltype('C')(260>>2);

on the basis of @Karl Napf

dont know why it gets downvoted it clearly compiles on VisualC++2015 and outputs A on my Machine

Answer 174

Lolo, 30 bytes

loloLo lOLo lo LOlo LO lOlolol

The only way to make characters in Lolo is to get it's number representation and convert it into a character.
Here, I get 65 which gives me A.

Answer 175

Pyth, 6 bytes

C-*TT3

Try It Online

Explanation

C         ASCII integer to character
  -*TT3    (Ten*Ten)-3 (97)

Answer 176

R, 12 bytes

LETTERS[2/2]

Pretty self-explanatory: LETTERS is all the upper case letters, and 2/2 evaluates to 1, so we get the the first element.

Answer 177

PHP, 19 Bytes

<?=chr(ord('C')-2);

Get the ASCII value for C and take 2 off it. Doesn't need any special encoding and will work in PHP 4, 5 and 7

If you turn errors off you can reduce it to 17:

<?=chr(ord(C)-2);

Answer 178

R, 12 bytes

letters[2/2] #12 bytes; rules followed!

I tried other ways of doing this, but they broke the rules :(

tail(rev(letters),n=2/2) #24 bytes; uses 'a'
head(letters,n=2/2) #19 bytes; uses 'a'

Answer 179

Python 3, 60 bytes

No disallowed characters

'%c'%-~((''=='')<<((''=='')-~(''==''))*((''=='')--(''=='')))

Try it online!