Talk:1685: Patch

Hey, I'm first! Guessing the Bot only JUST created this, it was mere minutes after midnight EST when I landed on this page. Unfortunately this is a comic I'm less capable of explaining. From the looks of it, his Photoshop Patch turned what looks like C code into gobbledegook by filling in several of the spaces (and I think even changing some of the characters, possible with characters which fill more of the space). - NiceGuy1 108.162.218.77 04:24, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

This appears to be Python code. Note the "def" keyword, how "for i in [garbled]:" is used rather than C's for syntax, and how there are no semicolons or braces. --Sherlock9 (talk) 05:03, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

Photoshop has a 'patch' tool but it has a very different function from a software patch.

An explanation of Photoshop's patch tool might be helpful in identifying patterns in what pixels were changed by it, perhaps facilitating the identification of some likely characters. Dansiman (talk) 05:56, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

The first function looks like "isPrime" and seems to check if a number is prime. The last function looks like "quicksort". Both are common functions you create when learning programming. Not sure about the second one, but it looks like it uses regular expressions. -- 198.41.242.242 06:44, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

I think the second one is "isPrimeRegex". *cringe* 141.101.104.25 08:55, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

Second function looks like a function to check if number is a prime using Regex (described here http://www.noulakaz.net/2007/03/18/a-regular-expression-to-check-for-prime-numbers/). I don't know if it deserves some special mention, but at least to me (non-programmer) it looks like one of the most arcane things you can do in programming 141.101.80.79 07:22, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

That indeed looks very much like it. I think this is worth mentioning. --198.41.242.240 11:22, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

Do you think the use of pi is a reference to one of the other comics(I forgot which one...)?Transuranium (talk) 10:35, 25 May 2016 (UTC)Transuranium

I rather guess it is short for pivot. See quicksort for what the pivot does. --198.41.242.240 11:22, 25 May 2016 (UTC)