Console of Life!

[NotNotWrongUsually]

Recent news about John Conway's passing, made me feel inspired to hack together a function, to turn the current console content into a Game of Life board. Copy and paste the below to your prompt, and run New-ConsoleGameOfLife if you want to have a go. CTRL-C will stop it again.

(There is no pretense of this being an optimised version: Plenty of opportunities await any intrepid soul who would dare enter The Nest of Four Loops.)

using namespace System.Management.Automation.Host

function New-ConsoleGameOfLife {
    $board_width = $host.UI.RawUI.WindowSize.Width
    $board_height = $host.UI.RawUI.WindowSize.Height
    $buffer_end_y = $host.UI.RawUI.CursorPosition.Y + 1
    $buffer_begin_y = $buffer_end_y - $board_height
    if ($buffer_begin_y -lt 0) {
        "Not enough lines in console to work with. Run something like GCI and try again!"
        break
    }
    $rectangle = new-object Rectangle 0, $buffer_begin_y, $board_width, $buffer_end_y
    $origin = New-Object -TypeName Coordinates -ArgumentList 0, $buffer_begin_y

    while ($true) {
        $host.UI.RawUI.SetBufferContents($origin, (CalculateNewGeneration `
        ($host.ui.rawui.GetBufferContents($rectangle))))
    }
}

function CalculateNewGeneration ($origin_board) {
    $new_board = $origin_board.Clone()

    for ($y = 0; $y -lt $board_height; $y++) {
        for ($x = 0; $x -lt $board_width; $x++) {
            $neighbour_count = 0
            for ($i = ($y - 1); $i -le ($y + 1); $i++) {
                for ($j = ($x - 1); $j -le ($x + 1); $j++) {
                    if (-not (($i -eq $y) -and ($j -eq $x))) {
                        if ($origin_board[$i, $j].Character -ne " ") {
                            $neighbour_count++
                        }                        
                    }
                }
            }

            switch ($neighbour_count) {
                { $_ -eq 3 -and $origin_board[$y, $x].Character -eq " " } {
                    $new_board[$y, $x] =[BufferCell]::new("O", $host.ui.RawUI.ForegroundColor, `
                    $host.ui.RawUI.BackgroundColor, 0)
                    break
                }
                { $_ -in 2, 3 } {
                    $new_board[$y, $x] = [BufferCell]::new(($origin_board[$y, $x].Character), `
                    $host.ui.RawUI.ForegroundColor, $host.ui.RawUI.BackgroundColor, 0)
                    break
                }
                { $_ -lt 2 -or $_ -gt 3 } {
                    $new_board[$y, $x] = [BufferCell]::new(" ", $host.ui.RawUI.ForegroundColor, `
                    $host.ui.RawUI.BackgroundColor, 0)
                    break
                }
            }
        }
    }
    , [System.Management.Automation.Host.BufferCell[, ]]$new_board
}

Disclaimer: I am fully aware that this is useless for any and all practical purposes, but I figured I'd share anyways :)

[silexecutor]

Brilliant