Malbolge

Malbolge
A cat program in Malbolge
ParadigmEsoteric, imperative, scalar, value-level
Designed byBen Olmstead[1]
DeveloperBen Olmstead[1]
First appeared1998
Typing disciplineUntyped
Filename extensions.mal, .mb
Influenced by
Brainfuck, INTERCAL (Tri-INTERCAL), Befunge
Influenced
Dis, Malbolge Unshackled

Malbolge (/mælˈbl/) is a public domain esoteric programming language invented by Ben Olmstead in 1998, named after the eighth circle of hell in Dante's Inferno, the Malebolge. It was specifically designed to be almost impossible to use, via a counter-intuitive 'crazy operation', base-three arithmetic, and self-altering code.[2] It builds on the difficulty of earlier challenging esoteric languages (such as Brainfuck and Befunge), but exaggerates this aspect to an extreme degree, playing on the entangled histories of computer science and encryption. Despite this design, it is possible to write useful Malbolge programs.

  1. ^ a b "Malbolge - Esolang". Archived from the original on 2022-08-27. Retrieved 2022-08-27.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference :0 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).