Introduction

If Node.js helps bring Javascript from the frontend to the backend, messing with net code and things, then Brainsuck is an attempt to make Brainfuck, a joke, more of a joke, by making it usable for backend web development 🙂.

How does it work

It still has 8 commands like what you would expect from normal Brainfuck:

• +: Adds 1 to current memory slot.
• -: Substracts 1 from current memory slot.
• >: Moves to next memory slot.
• <: Moves to previous memory slot.
• ,: Reads 1 character from input.
• .: Outputs 1 character.
• [: If current memory slot is 0, jumps to ].
• ]: If current memory slot is not 0, jumps to [.

You can change the amount of memory slots in config.json, all memory slots are 8 bit and can overflow/underflow.

Handling requests

Every time there is a request, the Brainfuck code is run once.

For simplicity, user request's bodies are only the params of the url, for example, if you make a request to http://127.0.0.1:5000/hello/world, the input will be: /hello/world. And , will get each character in this input, continuously. If there is nothing to read, , will add 0 to the cell.

Though I might change this in the future which makes Brainsuck TCP and you can read the whole request body 🤔.

Data persistance

But for a backend to be remotely useful, we need a way to store our data. Brainsuck persists the memory, which means after every execution, the memory is still there and not reset. After each request, it is also stored into a file, so the next time you turn on the server, the memory is still the same.

Running the server

1. Write your code in index.bf.
2. Change port, hostname, and memory slots amount in config.json if you want.
3. Run node . in command line, and you are set!