A C brainfuck runtime for POSIX computers created in about ~1.5h.
headache takes a single argument: a path to a file containing brainfuck code.
./headache examples/hello-world.bf
./headache <Path to brainfuck file>Headaches first loads brainfuck code from a file provided as an argument.
Then, headache filters out only brainfuck-characters (those are <>+-.,[])
and puts them into an array which, in result, only contains commands for
the brainfuck runtime. At this point, the brainfuck runtime takes over
and runs the commands after each other. The cell-system of brainfuck is
handled by another array which, every time it could overflow, is extended
to fit the memory needed to run the program.
Currently headache has some major performance flaws. Those can be fixed easily which I might do at some point:
-
Brainfuck commands (those are
<>+-.,[]) are currently saved as char (0-256). This isn't necessary: There are only 8 directives which can be expressed by only 3 bits instead of 8. This means a huge problem for modern computers, as Windows Explorer will probably eat up all the remaining RAM, thus, every single bit of RAM needs to be saved for it. -
The whole code-file is loaded to RAM. This should not be done as this means that there will be problems when loading files bigger than the amount of RAM available. Files should be parted by a fixed amount of characters or, if in a loop, the [ and ] directives.
This project is something I wanted to do for myself for a longer time. I (a) wanted to learn how brainfuck works and wanted to write my own runtime or compiler for a programming language to further understand the principles used in programming languages and interpretation. Moreover, (b) I wanted to create a well documented brainfuck compiler itself for other people to have a easier time understanding how the exact thing I was trying to understand creating this project works.
headache runtime was created by @jbohnst.