{"id":66,"date":"2011-05-08T13:13:19","date_gmt":"2011-05-08T17:13:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lorinhalpert.com\/blag\/?p=66"},"modified":"2022-03-20T20:08:28","modified_gmt":"2022-03-21T00:08:28","slug":"php-code-golf-fizzbuzz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lorinhalpert.com\/blag\/archives\/66","title":{"rendered":"PHP Code Golfing – ‘FizzBuzz’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in 2007 I read an interesting article<\/a> about programmers who can’t actually program, probably shocking to some but not to those that remember Sturgeon’s Law<\/a> (90% of everything is crap). A quick glance at the program described and I already had the code floating around in my head, trivial for a seasoned programmer.<\/p>\n

The description of the program is as follows:<\/p>\n

Write a program that prints the numbers from 1 to 100. But for multiples of three print “Fizz” instead of the number and for the multiples of five print “Buzz”. For numbers which are multiples of both three and five print “FizzBuzz”.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Soon thereafter I discovered the concept of ‘code golfing’ and was intrigued. I quickly rationalized that it was the best ways to teach bad coding practices, but at the same time give invaluable insight into the infrequently used operations of the language – some that might one day save a lot of grief. Thus my spiral into madness began as I set out to make the world’s smallest working version of the trivial FizzBuzz in PHP. Drinking might<\/em> have been involved in this decision.<\/p>\n

Let’s begin with a clean example of FizzBuzz, coded in PHP, weighing in at 351 bytes:<\/p>\n

<?php\n\/\/ Simple FizzBuzzer by Lorin\nfor ($num = 1; $num <= 100; $num++) { \n    if ($num %3 === 0 || $num % 5 === 0) {\t\/\/ is $num divisible by 3 or 5?\n      if ($num % 3 === 0) echo 'Fizz';\t\/\/ Modulus instead of division\n      if ($num % 5 === 0) echo 'Buzz';\n    } else echo $num; \/\/ otherwise display number\n    echo PHP_EOL; \/\/ new line!\n}\n?><\/pre>\n
Ok, easily readable – works fine. Now let’s golf, but I’ll skip to the conclusion since that’s why you’re here, isn’t it?<\/p>\n
But before that, I’d like to note code that looks like the following rarely has any reason to exist other than being a personal challenge. The two major exceptions to this would be demo scene<\/a> code, where the goals are quite similar to those of code golf, or where code space is at an extreme premium, which has become much less relevant these days.<\/p>\n
Here’s the svelte 56 byte result, a 6.2x decrease in code base!<\/p>\n
<?while($i++<100)echo$i%3?!$i=$i:Fizz,$i%5?$i:Buzz,~\u00f5;<\/pre>\n
Let’s break down the code:<\/p>\n