SmileBASIC Obfuscator

I don't really get the criticism of this... It's just a small experimental program that has a bunch of uses outside scrambling your code around. You could, for example, use this on a small part of your code just to hide the checksum algorithm for your save files, or the puzzle solution in a game. If someone actually uses this on their entire program, obscuring the most useful and repurposable functions, then that's bad. ^{also i just think it's a bit rude to downvote someone's program without trying it...}

I would find your comment agreeable and applicable, if not for two things: The creator suggested an intent to protect code in whole and really only suggested the cheating motive later, stating

people would be able to compress and rename all variables and functions in their code automatically, and make it nearly impossible to understand This would be a really nice program for SmileBASIC

and suggesting that "SmileBASIC may be less beginner friendly" is some sort of minor inconvenience. This troubles me. If obfuscating SmileBASIC programs becomes the norm I think the community will suffer for it. Even if people cheat--so what? Either they're learning by working with someone else's code, or they're just ruining the fun for themselves. I don't think the tool should be removed entirely: its existence does not invent obfuscation. Any sufficiently knowledgeable programmer could do so manually as needed. It may not even cause its proliferation. But there is something to be said for its existence towards the encouragement of such practices, if no one speaks against it. I would retract my vote, but at this point contention has played out on the vote system and I don't think there is much point.

Wow that is a lot of opinions... I don't like arguing can I not be on anybody's bad side? Lol Well I'm going to turn this into a highly customizable, automatic code editor ** Which will include beautifying code too ** But the purpose of this was to support the idea of complete consistency of code, and I can achieve that really easily now. So, after some updates I'll end up renaming this to something that doesn't sound as threatening. Sorry for that. Cause it'll be a tool to edit code however the user wants. To save time doing it manually. Not to focus purely on hiding things! (But I want that to be an option) It's worth noting that this would be easy to apply only to specific functions. My goal is to give the users more power over THEIR code, that's all. Before submitting this, manually obfuscating programs was praised. Why does automating it suddently change everyone's opinions?

Will do! Good idea

Keep in mind that if the string is prefaced by a number and a colon, you have to keep the number/colon combo. For instance:

VAR("AVARIABLE") -> VAR("OBFA")
VAR("3:AVARIABLE") -> VAR("3:OBFA")

So you must check both that a literal matches the exact name and also that the string matches [n]:<string>, and only replace the name portion.

Manually obfuscating something means that you would put the effort into making it unreadable, making you think twice about it. Automation removes that barrier, allowing anyone with the knowledge of how to operate your obfuscator to ruin their code for everyone else. :(

Also line 325 gives me an out of memory error

I don't remember anyone ever praising manual obfuscation.

He's referring to that one puzzle thing where no one knew what did what

I actually don't understand why there is too much hate... I like the idea.

The thing Nathaniel did?

The posts below and the related thread gives a general idea or two.

This is pretty cool! I can understand why some people are upset, but when used in the right ways, this can be used as a way to hide secret code (such as code for puzzles).

SmileBASIC Deobfuscator. Coming 2019 to a 3DS near you. Official Devlog

Heck yeah, now I can deobfuscate the... ^{_{[checks notes]}} zero programs using this

This program was obfuscated probably using itself