Parses and interprets a Turing Complete programming language consisting of 8 symbols
The language's machine model consists of the program and instruction pointer, as well as a one-dimensional array of at least 30,000 byte cells initialized to zero; a movable data pointer (initialized to point to the leftmost byte of the array); and two streams of bytes for input and output (most often connected to a keyboard and a monitor respectively, and using the ASCII character encoding).
The eight language commands each consist of a single character:
| Character | Instruction Performed |
|---|---|
| > | Increment the data pointer by one (to point to the next cell to the right) |
| < | Decrement the data pointer by one (to point to the next cell to the left) |
| + | Increment the byte at the data pointer by one |
| - | Decrement the byte at the data pointer by one |
| . | Output the byte at the data pointer |
| , | Accept one byte of input, storing its value in the byte at the data pointer |
| [ | If the byte at the data pointer is zero, then instead of moving the instruction pointer forward to the next command, jump it forward to the command after the matching ] command |
| ] | If the byte at the data pointer is nonzero, then instead of moving the instruction pointer forward to the next command, jump it back to the command after the matching [ command |
[ and ] match as parentheses usually do: each [ matches exactly one ] and vice versa, the [ comes first, and there can be no unmatched [ or ] between the two.