How many keywords I can fit into a single C# expression? – results

When I wrote the yield return await and await foreach geekery post I had no idea it would be so interesting for so many people. But it really spiked up. And I feel a need to point out some interesting ideas people posted on Reddit, in comments or on Twitter.

Let me start with something C# unrelated, but no less interesting.

not exp log srand xor s qq qx xor s x x length uc ord and print chr ord for qw q join use sub tied qx xor eval xor print qq q q xor int eval lc q m cos and print chr ord for qw y abs ne open tied hex exp ref y m xor scalar srand print qq q q xor int eval lc qq y sqrt cos and print chr ord for qw x printf each return local x y or print qq s s and eval q s undef or oct xor time xor ref print chr int ord lc foreach qw y hex alarm chdir kill exec return y s gt sin sort split

This Perl piece, posted by user CaptainAdjective, prints “just another perl hacker”, when you execute it. And although I programmed in Perl for a very, very short time and I know it’s a powerful language, this is nuts.

But back to the C#. The easiest one, which I missed and I’m pretty mad at myself, is adding casting to my original expression: case null when await this as object is false . This brings us to 9.

Some people found that you can do the casting, for example, indefinitely and get infinite amount of “blue words”, I don’t consider (and you might disagree and I’m fine with that) repetition as a valid solution.

Another interesting one is: case null when await this is false as object is null . Which uses the is twice, but don’t think it is a repetition per se. Although it brings us to 11, it’s not the best one yet.

12 is the next step with: from _ in await this where null as object is bool select new int() (little bit more code for context). Which brings us to LINQ usage and I had a gut feeling there might be something to exploit, but I ran out of time.

But even this was bested by 15 with: else yield return from _ in await this where true as object is null orderby false descending select new bool() (little bit more code for context).

And although 15 is impressive, 19 is even better. And it looks like this: from _ in await this join __ in await value on null equals this where default as object is false orderby true descending select new bool { } (little bit more code for context). This, at the moment, is the longest continuous Span (without repetition) posted by user porges. And I think 19 is bananas. Hats off. If we ever bump into each other, beer is on me.

Anybody with way too much free time going to crack 20? 😉