Daniel Temkin's Folders Language Gets a Browser Emulator
The esolang, where code is only nested empty directories, can now run without anyone filling a desktop with thousands of them.
Daniel Temkin has released a browser emulator for Folders, the programming language Temkin first built in 2015, in which a program is written as nothing but nested, empty directories. The emulator sits on the Folders page of Temkin's site and loads five sample programs, including Hello World, 99 Bottles and Fibonacci, which can be run, stepped through or paused beside a live view of the call stack and a mock command prompt. Temkin shared the new release on Oct. 18 and wrote that it reached the top of Hacker News at the end of that week.
Temkin writes:
Inspired by the Whitespace language, Folders is devoted to the idea of dematerialized code. It began with the question What is more empty than a file with no visible text? The empty folder is clutter, an appendage with no purpose. In git, it is ignored entirely (for this reason, it is suggested that Folders programs put .gitignore files in their deepest reaches).
It's also a nod to Pippin Barr's Nothings Suite, where game engines are loaded but nothing is built, only open expanse.
The Folders emulator running a sample program, from Temkin's release. Video: Daniel Temkin
The language started on Windows, where empty folders take up no disk space. Temkin's documentation leans into the joke, offering Folders as a way to "keep all your data encoded in folder names and never worry about running out of space again." The original C# implementation dates to 2015, and a Python port by Sina Khalili followed in 2020. The emulator is aimed at people on other operating systems, and at anyone who would rather not store thousands of empty folders on a desktop.
Folders is one of the languages collected in Temkin's book Forty-Four Esolangs, published by MIT Press. Killscreen last wrote about Temkin's work in September, when Natasha Chuk's essay in iidrr mag read esoteric languages alongside Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy.
For more reading, see Code is a plaything in Daniel Temkin's esolangs, the Folders entry on the Esolang wiki, the Folders source on GitHub and Temkin's Forty-Four Esolangs project.
The Folders emulator, and a program pictured as a maze and as islands. Images: Daniel Temkin
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