Halt and catch fire
You are encouraged to solve this task according to the task description, using any language you may know.
- Task
Create a program that crashes as soon as possible, with as few lines of code as possible. Be smart and don't damage your computer, ok?
- References
6502 Assembly
Upon executing this byte as code, the processor will halt. No interrupts can occur either. This does not occur on 65c02-based hardware such as the Apple II or Atari Lynx. <lang 6502asm> db $02</lang>
8086 Assembly
Disabling interrupts prior to a HLT
command will cause the CPU to wait forever.
<lang asm>cli
hlt</lang>
68000 Assembly
The 68000 can only read words or longs at even addresses. Attempting to do so at an odd address will crash the CPU. <lang 68000devpac>CrashBandicoot equ $100001 LEA CrashBandicoot,A0 MOVE.W (A0),D0</lang>
ALGOL 68
This program will crash immediately on startup. <lang algol68>( print( ( 1 OVER 0 ) ) )</lang>
ALGOL W
This won't halt the CPU but the program will crash immediately on startup. <lang algolw>assert false.</lang>
C
<lang c>int main(){int a=0, b=0, c=a/b;}</lang>
C++
Use an unhandled exception to crash the program. <lang cpp>#include <stdexcept> int main() {
throw std::runtime_error("boom");
}</lang>
- Output:
terminate called after throwing an instance of 'std::runtime_error' what(): boom
The output depends on the compiler and platform but should be similar.
Go
This wouldn't survive go fmt which would stretch it out to 5 lines. However, that's not compulsory and the task says do it in as few lines as possible.
<lang go>package main; import "fmt"; func main(){a, b := 0, 0; fmt.Println(a/b)}</lang>
An alternative shorter line would be:
<lang go>package main; func main(){panic(0)}</lang>
Nim
One possibility: <lang Nim>assert false</lang>
Another solution with the same number of characters (we could also use mod
instead of div
):
<lang>echo 1 div 0</lang>
Pascal
Do an illegal memory access at $0
<lang pascal>begin pByte($0)^ := 0 end.</lang>
- Output:
Runtime error 216 at $0000000000401098
Perl
<lang perl>&a</lang>
- Output:
Undefined subroutine &main::a called at line 1.
Phix
I normally and quite often just use this:
?9/0
The ? means print and/but obviously the 9/0 triggers a fatal error before it gets that far.
- Output:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Phix\test.exw:1 attempt to divide by 0 Global & Local Variables --> see C:\Program Files (x86)\Phix\ex.err Press Enter...
Alternatives include crash("some message") which produces similar output, and abort(n) which is somewhat quieter with abort(0) meaning (immediately) terminate normally without an error. All of those can be caught by try/catch: should you want to get properly brutal and defeat any active exception handler you can/must resort to inline assembly:
try #ilASM{ [PE32] push 1 -- uExitCode call "kernel32","ExitProcess" [PE64] sub rsp,8*5 mov rcx,1 -- uExitCode call "kernel32","ExitProcess" [ELF32] xor ebx, ebx mov eax, 1 -- SYSCALL_EXIT int 0x80 [ELF64] mov rax,231 -- sys_exit_group(rdi=int error_code) xor rdi,rdi syscall } catch e ?e end try
No output, the try/catch is just for show. ExitProcess/sys_exit are the only non-catchable things I know of, apart from a few other deliberates such as quitting the debugger, and aside from being technically difficult to catch it seems reasonable to classify them as direct actions rather than errors.
Raku
<lang perl6>++8</lang> Syntactically: Valid.
Semantically: Change the mathematical concept of 8 to 9, either in your whole computer, or maybe the whole universe.
Fails with this run-time error:
- Output:
Cannot resolve caller prefix:<++>(Int:D); the following candidates match the type but require mutable arguments: (Mu:D $a is rw) (Int:D $a is rw --> Int:D) The following do not match for other reasons: (Bool $a is rw) (Mu:U $a is rw) (Num:D $a is rw) (Num:U $a is rw) (int $a is rw --> int) (num $a is rw --> num) in block <unit> at -e line 1
REXX
<lang rexx>=</lang>
Wren
<lang ecmascript>Fiber.abort("")</lang>
Z80 Assembly
The processor is permanently halted. Strangely enough, this does not work on the Game Boy. Rather, both the HALT
instruction and the instruction after it are skipped.
<lang z80>di
halt</lang>