Geschwindigkeitsficken - Speedfuck

Brainfuck is an esoteric (aka joke) programming language invented by Urban Müller in 1993. This project aims at compiling and more importantly optimizing code written in Brainfuck. If you want to know more about optimizing brainfuck i recommend Mats Linanders blog post about it. There is also a list of similar projects on this page.

Name

The name originated in a skype chat many years ago. @Webfreak001 had the idea of writing an optimizing brainfuck compiler calling it "Speedfuck" - a translator bot automatically translated it to "Geschwindigkeitsficken" from the german word for Speed (Geschwindigkeit) and the colloquial word for having Sex (ficken).

Speed

The graph shows the runtime of Mandelbrot compiled using different Brainfuck compilers. All compilers which output C code appear twice, compiling the generated code with gcc -O0 vs gcc -O2. Speedfuck appears three times: Compiling generated C code with -O0, with -O2 and generating assembly code directly. The script for measuring execution speed and plotting can be found here.

Here is a list of the compilers in the graph above:

• esotope 2009 by Kang Seonghoon
• bfoptimization 2015 by Mats Linander
• bf2c.hs 2002 by Bertram Felgenhauer
• speedfuck 2018 by Jakob Löw
• yabfc 2017 by Cameron Swinoga
• bfc 2017 by Wilfred Hughes
• bfdb 2006 by David Moews

Compiling

git clone https://github.com/M4GNV5/Geschwindigkeitsficken.git
cd Geschwindigkeitsficken

make

Examples

Compiling the popular Hello World! program

++++++++++[>+++++++>++++++++++>+++>+<<<<-]
>++.>+.+++++++..+++.>++.<<+++++++++++++++.>.+++.------.--------.>+.>.

outputs

puts("Hello World!\n")

Well duh! But thats kind of boring so lets take simpler programs and disable constant folding:

$ bin/speedfuck -Oconstfold -Otrailing -code '+++++>>++<<--'
p[0] += 3
p[2] += 2

#Here you can already see one of the most common optimizations applied to
# brainfuck: grouping +, -, > and <. Note how the statements are reordered so
# that the last two - can be grouped with the first five + even though there is
# code in between.

$ bin/speedfuck -Oconstfold -Otrailing -code '++++>>++<<-[-]'
p[0] = 0
p[2] += 2

#Another common optimization is [-] which sets a cell to zero, this also turns
# all previous changes to p[0] to noops so they are removed.

$ bin/speedfuck -Oconstfold -Otrailing -code '++[->+++<]'
p[0] += 2
p[1] += p[0] * 3
p[0] = 0

#the above loop is called a copy loop as it adds three to p[1] and subtracts one
# from p[0] until p[0] is zero. Thus the loop can be optimized to adding
# 3 * p[0] to p[1] and setting p[0] to zero.

$ bin/speedfuck -Oconstfold -Otrailing -code '++[-->+++>++++<<]'
p[0] += 2
p[2] += p[0] * 2
p[1] += p[0] * 3 / 2
p[0] = 0

#copyloops still work with multiple multiplications, in fact the set to zero
# loop [-] is just a special copyloop without multiplications.

$ bin/speedfuck -Oconstfold -code '++>+++[->++++<]<++[->>+++<<]>>++.'
p[0] += 4
p[1] += 3
p[2] += p[1] * 4 + p[0] * 3 + 2
putchar(p[2])

#The above brainfuck code might look complicated at first but in fact it's just
# two copy loops which both add to p[2]. Note how the p[0] += 4 is combined
# from the two ++ before and after the first copyloop and how the two copyloops
# optimize to a single p[2] += ... statement.

Command line options

Generic

Either -i or -code must be given.

• -i <file> specifies an input file
• -o <file> specifies the output file (default: a.out). If the output file ends with .c C code will be outputted, .S makes it output amd64 assembly and .dump will write the internal instruction layout. Everything else produces a native executable.
• -code <code> passes code through a command line option rather than reading it from a file
• -g adds debugging information to the binary and outputs a .dump file which is shown by e.g. gdb for stepping

Optimization

By default all optimizations are enabled and can be disabled using the specific -O switch. Using -Onone disables all optimizations and allows to enable specific ones using the corresponding -O switch.

• -Onone Disables all optimizations by default
• -Ogroup groups censecutive +, - and >, < together.
• -Ocopyloop optimize [->++<] to p[1] = p[0] * 2; p[0] = 0;
• -Oshifts optimize ++>++ to p[0] += 2; p[1] += 2;
• -Onoop removes noops (e.g. ++--)
• -Ogroup2 reorders and groups statements. e.g. ++>++<++ turns into p[0] += 4; p[1] += 2
• -Oconstfold evaluate the program as much as possible
• -Otrailing remove all instructions after the last , or .
• -Osplitcomments splits comments on newlines (makes them more readable in output files)
• -Otrimcomments trim all comments (remove spacing from start and end)
• -Ostripcomments removes all comments, only optimization disabled by default