Unnecessary

"Taking a null program to a whole new level!"

The programming language

Unnecessary is an esoteric programming language. The language is named 'Unnecessary' because of the method this programming language works: the source file is unnecessary; in fact the existence of source code file leads to critical error. In case of critical error the interpreter must stop immediately and report the error.

Unnecessary has no instructions/commands. You can do nothing with this language, so using it is unnecessary as well. The whole Unnecessary program is NOP. Or actually, there should be no Unnecessary programs, since only valid Unnecessary program is a non-existing source code file.

The goal was to create a programming language that is easy to learn, not very useful, doesn't require input or do output, has no memory, has no instructions. Only an interpreter is required. As well, good thing is that distributing Unnecessary programs is extremely easy, and can be done without computers. As well, storage is no problem: you can have infinite amount of Unnecessary programs in a memory bit. Actually, storing them requires less memory than a bit.

Every valid program, however, is a quine. That's the only possible program, and the only valid form of program. In Unnecessary creating a null quine doesn't even require the existence of the empty program file, as in other languages. Has programming ever been easier? (Not to mention that it isn't even possible to write anything else than bug-free code!)

Oh, and the valid Unnecessary program file extension is "unn".

Interpreter

An Unnecessary interpreter must stop and report and error if a source file is found.
The interpreter can't do anything else, except print its own texts, that are debug messages for example.

Here's an Unnecessary interpreter written in Python. It includes debug command that can be toggled by writing "-debug" before the name of the source code file. You can download the interpreter here.

Example program

You can download an example program here. You should receive a 404 error. But that is naturally only a good thing, since an Unnecessary program isn't supposed to be existing. ;)

Compiler

In case someone wants to write a compiler, it should do the following:
1. Check that the source file doesn't exist.
2. If there was no source file, then it should build a program that does NOP in the language the compiler compiles it to.


Have fun!!

~ Keymaker, 15.6.2005