Polyglot
A program in eight languages.
Saturday 1 December 2001 at 11:00:00 am AEDT 4 min readAccording to Wikipedia:
In computing, a polyglot is a computer program or script written in a valid form of multiple programming languages or file formats.
One of the fun projects I was a part of when I was studying Computer Science was creating a polyglot with a number of friends. My contribution, which I am not sure I should be proud of, was adding shell script (and one other language which I can’t remember but I am hoping it wasn’t COBOL or FORTRAN).
The program gained notoriety in the early 1990s and was posted on USENET a number of times and probably circulated around the world a few times.
In honour of our dubious efforts, here is a version of that original program (updated in 2001 to include Perl). Note: the blank lines at the beginning of the source file are important as they are interpreted as machine code in 80x86. Yes, if you rename the file as a .COM in MS-DOS, it actually is a valid executable!
(*O/*_/Cu #%* )pop mark/CuG 4 def/# 2 def%%%%@@P[TX---P\P_SXPY!Ex(mx2ex("SX!Ex4P)Ex=CuG #%* *+Ex=CuG #%*------------------------------------------------------------------*+Ex=CuG #%* POLYGLOT - a program in eight languages 15 February 1991 *+Ex=CuG #%* 10th Anniversary Edition 1 December 2001 *+Ex=CuG #%* *+Ex=CuG #%* Written by Kevin Bungard, Peter Lisle, and Chris Tham *+Ex=CuG #%* *+Ex=CuG #%* Polyglot suports the following languages: *+Ex=CuG #%* 1. COBOL (ANSI) *+Ex=CuG #%* 2. Pascal (ISO) *+Ex=CuG #%* 3. Fortran (ANSI, f77) *+Ex=CuG #%* 4. C (ANSI-ish) *+Ex=CuG #%* 5. PostScript *+Ex=CuG #%* 6. Linux/Unix shell script (bash, sh, csh) *+Ex=CuG #%* 7. Intel x86 machine language (MS-DOS, Win32, Linux) *+Ex=CuG #%* 8. Perl (version 5) *+Ex=CuG #%* *+Ex=CuG #%* Usage: *+Ex=CuG #%* 1. Rename this file to polyglot.[cob|pas|f77|c|ps|sh|com|pl] *+Ex=CuG #%* *+Ex=CuG #%* 2. Compile and run with your favorite compiler and operating *+Ex=CuG #%* system. *+Ex=CuG #%* *+Ex=CuG #%* Notes: *+Ex=CuG #%* 1. We have attempted to use only standard language features. *+Ex=CuG #%* *+Ex=CuG #%* 2. Without the -traditional flag gcc will issue a warning. *+Ex=CuG #%* *+Ex=CuG #%* 3. When transferring from Unix to DOS make sure that a LF *+Ex=CuG #%* is correctly translated into a CR/LF. *+Ex=CuG #%* *+Ex=CuG #%* 4. Keep the black lines at the start of the program. They *+Ex=CuG #%* are important. *+Ex=CuG #%* *+Ex=CuG #%* 5. This text is a comment block in all eight languages. *+Ex=CuG #%* *+Ex=CuG #%* Please mail any comments, corrections or additions to *+Ex=CuG #%* polyglot@ideology.com.au *+Ex=CuG #%* *+Ex=CuG #%*------------------------------------------------------------------*QuZ=CuG #%* *+Ex=CuG #%*!Mx)ExQX5ZZ5SSP5n*5X!)Ex+ExPQXH,B+ExP[-9A-9B(g?(gA'UTTER_XYZZXX!X *+CuG #(* *(C # */); /*(C # *) program polyglot (output); (*+C # identification division.C # program-id. polyglot.C #C # data division.C # procedure division.C #C # * ))cleartomark /Bookman-Demi findfont 36 scalefont setfont (C # * (C #C # * hello polyglots$C # main.C # performC /# * ) 2>_$$; echo "hello polyglots"; rm _$$; exit;C # * (C #C *0 ) unless print "hello polyglots\n"; __END__ printC stop run. -*, 'hello polyglots'CC print.C display "hello polyglots". (C */ int i; /*C */ main () { /*C */ i=printf ("hello polyglots\n"); O= &i; return *O; /*C *) (*C *) begin (*C *) writeln ('hello polyglots'); (*C *) (* )C * ) pop 60 360 (C * ) pop moveto (hello polyglots) show (C * ) pop showpage ((C *) end .(* )C)pop% program polyglot. *){*/}For reference, the authoritative source of Polyglot is here.