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KVIKKALKUL

Specialty Definition: KVIKKALKUL

DomainDefinition

Computing

Kvikkalkul /kveek`kahl-kool'/ A deliberately cryptic programming language said to have been devised by the Swedish Navy in the 1950s as part of their abortive attempt at a nuclear weapons program. What little is known about it comes from a series of an anonymous posts to Usenet in 1994. The poster described the language, saying that he had programmed in Kvikkalkul when he worked for the Swedish Navy in the 1950s. It is an open question whether the posts were a troll, a subtle parody or truth stranger than fiction could ever be. Assuming it existed, Kvikkalkul is so much a bondage-and-discipline language that it is, in its own ways, even more bizarre than the deliberate parody language INTERCAL. Among its notable "features", all symbols in Kvikkalkul, including variable names and program labels, can consist only of digits. Operators consist entirely of the punctuation symbols (, ), -, and :. Kvikkalkul allows no comments - they might not correspond with the code. Kvikkalkul's only data type is the signed fixed-point fractional number, i.e. a number between (but not including) -1 and 1. Dealings with the Real World that require numbers outside that range are done with functions that notionally map that range to a larger range (e.g., -16383 to -16383) and back. Kvikkalkul had a probabilistic jump operator which, if given a negative probability, would act like a COME FROM. This was, sadly, deleted in later versions of the language. Home (http://prefect.com/home24/kvikkalkul/). (1998-11-14). Source: The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing.

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Specialty Definition: Kvikkalkul programming language

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Kvikkalkul is a computer programming language ostensibly developed by the Swedish Navy in the 1950s and used on the SABINA computer. It came to fame in 1994 when someone made an anonymous post to usenet regarding it. Probably not a real language, but a joke; like INTERCAL in that respect.

External link

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Kvikkalkul programming language."

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Anagrams: KVIKKALKUL

Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams

Words within the letters "a-i-k-k-k-k-l-l-u-v"

-4 letters: kulaki.

-5 letters: kulak, vakil, villa.

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Alternative Orthography: KVIKKALKUL


Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)

4B 56 49 4B 4B 41 4C 4B 55 4C

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)

American Sign Language (origins from 1620-1817 in Italy and, especially, France) (references)

=

Semaphore (1791, in France) (references)

Braille (1829, in France) (references)

Morse Code (1836) (references)

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

Dancing Men (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1903) (references)

Binary Code (1918-1938, probably earlier) (references)

01001011 01010110 01001001 01001011 01001011 01000001 01001100 01001011 01010101 01001100

HTML Code (1990) (references)

&#75 &#86 &#73 &#75 &#75 &#65 &#76 &#75 &#85 &#76

ISO 10646 (1991-1993) (references)

004B 0056 0049 004B 004B 0041 004C 004B 0055 004C

British Sign Language (Fingerspelling, BSL; 1992, British Deaf Association Dictionary of British Sign Language) (references)

Encryption (beginner's substitution cypher): (references)

45564345453546455546

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INDEX

1. Anagrams
2. Orthography
3. Bibliography


  

Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.