Benedictum

A Latin-themed esoteric programming language.

Benedictum is a Turing-complete esoteric language inspired by Brainfuck, replacing cryptic symbols with Latin commands. Every program is a benediction — a blessing whispered to the machine.

Every word that isn't a command is silently ignored, so your source code can be written as flowing Latin prose with instructions woven in.

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Language Reference

Core Commands (v1.0)

Command	Latin Meaning	Brainfuck	Description
bene	good	+	Increment the current cell (wraps 255 → 0)
male	badly	-	Decrement the current cell (wraps 0 → 255)
dex	right	>	Move tape pointer right
sin	left	<	Move tape pointer left
dic	speak	.	Output current cell as ASCII character
audi	listen	,	Read one byte from stdin into current cell
ora	pray	[	Begin loop — skip to matching amen if cell is 0
amen	so be it	]	End loop — jump back to matching ora if cell is non-zero

Extended Commands (v1.1)

Command	Latin Meaning	Description
lux	light	Print current cell as a decimal number
nox	night	Print a newline character
fatum	fate	Set current cell to a random value (0–255)
requiem	rest	Halt the program immediately
sanctus	holy	Zero the current cell (shorthand for [male])
numerus	number	Read a decimal integer from stdin into the current cell

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Build

# compile
make

# or manually
gcc -Wall -Wextra -O2 -std=c99 -o benedictum src/benedictum.c

On Windows, make produces benedictum.exe. Requires GCC (e.g. WinLibs) or any C99-compatible compiler.

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Usage

benedictum [options] <file.ben>

Options

Flag	Description
--gloria	Verbose mode — dumps the full tape state after every instruction
--lex	Tokenize only — prints the instruction list and exits (great for debugging)
--version	Print version and exit
--help	Print help and exit

Examples

./benedictum benedictum/hello.ben
./benedictum benedictum/dice.ben
./benedictum --gloria benedictum/pax.ben
./benedictum --lex benedictum/fibonacci.ben

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Example Programs

All examples live in the benedictum/ directory.

File	Description
hello.ben	Prints Hello World!
alphabet.ben	Prints ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
countdown.ben	Prints 9876543210
echo.ben	Reads stdin and echoes it back
pax.ben	Counts down 9 → 0, one number per line
bottles.ben	Counts down 10 → 0 (ten bottles of beer)
fibonacci.ben	Prints the first 14 Fibonacci numbers
oracle.ben	Prints a random number (uses fatum)
three_fates.ben	Three random fate dice — Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos
dice.ben	Rolls a fair d6 (uses fatum + mod 6 algorithm)
sanctus.ben	Demonstrates the sanctus command
domine.ben	Reads a character, prints its ASCII value
numerus.ben	Reads a number and doubles it

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How It Works

Benedictum is a tape machine:

• A tape of 30,000 cells, each holding an unsigned value from 0–255
• A pointer that starts at cell 0
• Commands move the pointer, modify cells, perform I/O, or loop

The only control flow is ora/amen loops: if the current cell is zero, ora skips to the matching amen; if non-zero, amen jumps back to the matching ora. This is enough to be Turing-complete.

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Comments and Prose

Any text that is not a recognised command is silently ignored. This lets you write flowing prose around your code:

This is a prayer to the machine.
Let us begin with a blessing.

bene bene bene bene bene bene bene bene bene
ora dex bene bene bene bene bene bene bene male amen

The cell has been sanctified. Now speak.

dex dic

⚠️ Gotcha: some common English and Latin words are also Benedictum commands — sin, male, amen, ora, fatum, lux. If these appear in your prose at a word boundary they will be tokenized as instructions. Use --lex to inspect what the tokenizer actually sees.

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Converting from Brainfuck

Any Brainfuck program translates directly:

Brainfuck	Benedictum
+	bene
-	male
>	dex
<	sin
.	dic
,	audi
[	ora
]	amen

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File Extension

Benedictum source files use the .ben extension.

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System Requirements

• A C99-compatible compiler: GCC, Clang, or MSVC
• Works on Linux, macOS, and Windows

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License

MIT — see LICENSE

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Author

Bene — GitHub · Portfolio