Re:93% of Paint Splatters Are Valid Perl Programs (2019)
by ashton314 on Wednesday November 11, 2026 @10:37PM
(#50462760)
[delayed]
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Re:93% of Paint Splatters Are Valid Perl Programs (2019)
by ckdot on Wednesday November 11, 2026 @11:43PM
(#50463143)
Honest question, and I’m not the person you answered to: what is the point? I sincerely don’t get it.
Re:93% of Paint Splatters Are Valid Perl Programs (2019)
by odo1242 on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:26AM
(#50463378)
It's a joke about Perl. It's not meant to be taken seriously as a study about OCR.
Re:93% of Paint Splatters Are Valid Perl Programs (2019)
by asgraham on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:31AM
(#50463416)
Well a) it’s mostly a joke, b) to the extent it’s not a joke, it’s about how Perl accepts absurd inputs as valid programs, c) OCR paint splatters are just a funny way to get to weird arbitrary strings, of which a strangely high percentage (say, 93%) are valid Perl programs, d) so the choice of OCR doesn’t really affect the “validity” of the result, and e) the author did actually try multiple OCR settings and, when multiple OCRs produced valid Perl programs, chose “the most “interesting.””