Install befunge93 with Homebrew

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository
• Upstream docs
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• bef
• bef2c
• befprof

Project history

Cat's Eye Technologies lists Befunge-93 as a programming language with an inception date of September 1993, influenced by Maentwrog, brainfuck, and FALSE. Its official specification records the original document as September 1993, followed by updates in 1996, 2004, a Markdown conversion in 2012, and a Silver Jubilee update in 2018.

The current reference distribution describes itself as the Befunge-93 reference distribution and includes the specification, the `bef` reference interpreter/debugger, a Befunge-to-ANSI-C compiler, a profiler, examples, and historical archive material.

Adoption history

Befunge-93 became one of Cat's Eye Technologies' best-known languages: the official language catalog calls it one of the more popular languages Pressey designed and implemented, notes that it was cited in the New Hacker's Dictionary, and lists an esolangs.org entry and archive.org runnable copy.

The Homebrew formula preserves the language as a command-line toolchain for modern Unix-like systems, making an early-1990s esolang available through normal package-manager workflows rather than as only archived source.

How it is used

Users typically run `bef` to execute Befunge-93 programs, while `bef2c` and `befprof` provide a compiler-to-C path and profiling support from the reference distribution. Programs are constrained to the classic 80x25 toroidal playfield and use a stack-based, self-modifying instruction set.

The package is mostly useful for language archaeology, esolang experimentation, teaching unusual control-flow models, and running historical examples rather than for production application development.

Why package nerds care

Befunge-93 is package-nerd significant because it is a small, canonical implementation of a famous esolang: the installed binaries are not just demos, but the maintained reference lineage for a language that helped define two-dimensional and self-modifying esoteric programming.

It is also a nice example of why package managers carry cultural artifacts. Installing `befunge93` is less about dependency graphs and more about making computing folklore reproducible from a shell prompt.

Timeline

• 1993: Befunge-93 created and original documentation written.
• 1996: Official documentation updated.
• 2004: Documentation updated again and a rel_2_21-era tag appears in the reference repository.
• 2012: Specification converted from HTML to Markdown.
• 2018: Silver Jubilee Edition of the reference distribution prepared.
• 2020s: Homebrew continues to package the reference implementation as `befunge93`.

Related projects

• Maentwrog is listed by Cat's Eye Technologies as an influence and predecessor.
• Befunge-97 and Funge-98 are listed as later descendants of Befunge-93.
• Wierd is listed as another later Cat's Eye language influenced by Befunge-93.

Sources

• https://catseye.tc/article/Languages.md#befunge-93
• https://git.catseye.tc/Befunge-93/blob/master/README.markdown
• https://git.catseye.tc/Befunge-93/blob/master/doc/Befunge-93.markdown
• source_facts.package-manager-url