It's an offset printer

What's left of the code will now modify the faithful $_.

s/m[ou]|[-\dA-ln-z.\n_{}]|\$_=//gx; # remove garbage and noise
s/(.)(?{$*=''})/('$*.='.(++$#%2?'':"$0;").'pop;')x(ord($1)-31).'$*'/gee;
s/((.(\e\[.m)*|.){77})/$1\n/g;      # reshape for printing

• First, remove a lot of things:
  • all letters except m
  • dashes, curlies, newlines, and the m followed by u or o (thus preserving the first one)
  • and also the $_= bit
• For every character (.), execute this: (?{$*=''}) (that is: initialize the deprecated $*)
• Then replace it with:
  • First pass of /e: "$*.=pop;"x(ord($1)-31) . $* or "$*.=$0;pop;"x(ord($1)-31).$*, depending on the parity of the deprecated $#.
  • (note that the pop takes a character off @ARGV each time, no matter which character you used (either the one on top of @ARGV or a video reversed space))
  • Second pass: replace this with the actual result.
• Put newlines every 77 characters.

Explanation: $_ holds characters that represent numbers. These are counted as offsets from the character before space. For example, <space> is 1, ! is 2, " is 3, and so on... These represent the length of the on and off strings. ord($1)-31 is the formula to get these values.

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Copyright © 2000-2001, Philippe "BooK" Bruhat.