The Circute Cellular Automaton

Note: parts of this readme were cribbed from the esolangs.org wiki entry for Circute, which is in the public domain.

Circute is a two-dimensional five-state cellular automaton. It was designed by Chris Pressey in 2005 as a test of the so-called "wire-crossing problem". It is similar in some respects to WireWorld, but attempts to act more like an actual digital electronic circuit, providing as its basic mechanism the only logic gate you ever really need, the NAND gate.

Syntax

• - blank. Never changes.
• = - wire. Sparks pass through.
• - - tail. Used to make sparks act more like snakes.
• # - spark. These spread across wires.
• N - NAND gate. Never changes itself, but if there's a free wire directly along the left or the right, send a message along any wire directly above or below.

Implementation

Circute has a simple description written in ALPACA. This distribution contains both that description, and a Perl script compiled from it which animates the cellular automaton.