Editing One-liner program (section)

==History==
The concept of a one-liner program has been known since the 1960s<ref>{{cite book |title=10 PRINT CHR$ (205.5 + RND (1)); : GOTO 10 |date=2014 |publisher=Mit Press |isbn=9780262526746 |page=148 |url=http://nickm.com/trope_tank/10_PRINT_121114.pdf |accessdate=3 July 2018}}</ref> with the release of the [[APL (programming language)|APL]] programming language. With its terse syntax and powerful mathematical operators, APL allowed useful programs to be represented in a few symbols.

In the 1970s, one-liners became associated with the rise of the [[home computer]] and [[BASIC]]. Computer magazines published [[type-in program]]s in many dialects of BASIC. Some magazines devoted regular columns solely to impressive short and one-line programs.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://archive.org/stream/run-magazine-35/Run_Issue_35_1986_Nov#page/n109/mode/2up|title=RUN magazine issue 35|date=November 1986 }}</ref>

The word ''One-liner'' also has two references in the index of the book ''[[The AWK Programming Language]]'' (the book is often referred to by the abbreviation ''TAPL''). It explains the programming language [[AWK programming language|AWK]], which is part of the [[Unix]] [[operating system]]. The authors explain the birth of the ''one-liner'' paradigm with their daily work on early [[Unix]] machines:
{{Quote|The 1977 version had only a few built-in variables and predefined functions. It was designed for writing short programs […] Our model was that an invocation would be one or two lines long, typed in and used immediately. Defaults were chosen to match this style […] We, being the authors, ''knew'' how the language was supposed to be used, and so we only wrote one-liners.}}

Notice that this original definition of a ''one-liner'' implies immediate execution of the program without any compilation. So, in a strict sense, only source code for interpreted languages qualifies as a ''one-liner''. But this strict understanding of a ''one-liner'' was broadened in 1985 when the [[IOCCC]] introduced the category of ''Best One Liner'' for [[C (programming language)|C]], which is a [[compiled language]].