Subj : Syntax, style, the infinite monkey theorum and coding
To   : comp.programming
From : gswork
Date : Fri Aug 19 2005 10:56 am

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem
contains a high quality entry on the theorum

quoting briefly:

"The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at
random on a typewriter keyboard will almost surely eventually type
every book in France's Biblioth=E8que nationale de France (National
Library). In the restatement of the theorem most popular among English
speakers, the monkeys eventually type out the collected works of
William Shakespeare."

then pointing out that infinity isn't required (it would actually
guarantee an infite amount of copies of all texts)

"a thousand monkeys typing random letters at 100 characters per minute
would very likely type the word "banana" within 6 weeks."

what they didn't mention was that, intriguingly, it only takes few
monkeys feverishly hitting the keyboard and making generous but
unpredictable use of the shift key to immediately start producing
functioning perl code!

erm... only joking.

okay, so i can't follow perl code - some times it just looks like so
much:
hjgf$~@//\4-abc/\%$@
in fact that snippet might be really useful to someone!

Any favourite code snippets you've seen that have that 'many monkeys'
appearance?  I don't mean deliberate obfuscation, but some working code
you've seen.

Code snippets with that 'monkeys' feel are kind of like modern art -
you're aware that it's supposed to mean something and that it may well
be very clever, but you can't help feeling that a 3 year old, or indeed
a money, would happily and readily, but unintentially, hammer out the
exact same!

.