> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://mintlify.com/shedskin/shedskin/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Example Programs

> 80+ example programs demonstrating Shed Skin's capabilities

## Overview

Shed Skin includes over **80 non-trivial example programs** totaling more than 25,000 lines of code (measured by sloccount). These examples demonstrate the compiler's capabilities across a wide range of domains and serve as excellent references for writing Shed Skin-compatible code.

The examples range from simple algorithms to complex applications including emulators, game engines, graphics renderers, and computational tools.

## Example Categories

The examples cover diverse application domains:

### Games & Entertainment

* **Chess engines**: chess, sunfish
* **Board games**: othello, othello2, othello3, score4 (connect four), go
* **Puzzle solvers**: sudoku1-5, rubik, rubik2, sokoban, kanoodle, mastermind
* **Classic games**: tictactoe, life (Conway's Game of Life), pylife

### Emulators & Interpreters

* **c64**: Full Commodore 64 emulator (3,332 lines)
* **pygasus**: NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) emulator (1,510 lines)
* **doom**: WAD rendering engine (666 lines)
* **brainfuck**: Brainfuck interpreter

### Graphics & Rendering

* **Ray tracers**: mao, minilight, pygmy, pylot, yopyra, path\_tracing
* **3D engines**: gs (Wolfenstein-like), softrender
* **Fractals**: mandelbrot, mandelbrot2, chaos
* **Image processing**: hq2x (pixel art scaling), tonyjpegdecoder, minpng, stereo
* **Graphics algorithms**: voronoi, voronoi2, pycsg (constructive solid geometry)

### Algorithms & Data Structures

* **Search algorithms**: astar (A\*), dijkstra, dijkstra2
* **Sorting**: timsort
* **Graph algorithms**: mwmatching (maximum weighted matching), chull (3D convex hull)
* **Optimization**: loop (Havlak loop recognition), genetic, genetic2, adatron (SVM)
* **SAT solvers**: sat, pisang

### Compression & Encoding

* **Compression**: ac\_encode, block (Huffman), lz2 (Lempel-Ziv), tarsalzp, rsync
* **Cryptography**: sha (SHA-1), solitaire

### Scientific Computing

* **Physics simulations**: nbody, bh (Barnes-Hut), fysphun
* **Machine learning**: neural1, neural2, kmeanspp
* **Linear algebra**: linalg
* **Quantum computing**: quameon (quantum Monte Carlo)

### Benchmarks

* **pystone**: Standard Python benchmark
* **richards**: Standard benchmark
* **sieve**: Prime number sieves (Eratosthenes and Atkin)

### System & Network

* **webserver**: Simple web server
* **rdb**: iPod shuffle programmer
* **msp\_ss**: Serial bootstrap loader

### Other

* **plcfrs**: Natural language parser
* **collatz**: Collatz record sequences
* **ant**: TSP (Traveling Salesman Problem) approximation
* **amaze**: Maze generator and solver

## Repository

All examples are available in the Shed Skin repository:

[https://github.com/shedskin/shedskin/tree/master/examples](https://github.com/shedskin/shedskin/tree/master/examples)

Each example is in its own directory containing:

* Python source code (`.py` files)
* README.md with specific instructions (if needed)
* Related data files
* CMakeLists.txt for building

## Running Examples

### Building All Examples

To build and test all examples at once:

```bash theme={null}
shedskin test
```

This command will compile and run all examples in the examples directory.

### Building a Single Example

To build and test a specific example:

```bash theme={null}
shedskin test --target <example_name>
```

For example, to build the `timsort` example:

```bash theme={null}
shedskin test --target timsort
```

### Manual Compilation

To manually compile and run an example:

```bash theme={null}
cd examples/mandelbrot
shedskin build mandelbrot
build/mandelbrot
```

### Extension Modules

Some examples are designed as extension modules (marked with `extmod` in the examples list). These need to be compiled with the `-e` flag and imported into Python:

```bash theme={null}
cd examples/doom
shedskin build -e doom.py
cp build/doom.so .
python doom_main.py
```

### GUI Examples

Examples marked with `GUI` require graphics libraries like pygame. Make sure you have the necessary dependencies installed:

```bash theme={null}
pip install pygame
```

## Example Complexity

The examples vary significantly in complexity:

* **Simple** (\< 100 lines): mandelbrot, sieve, life, ant
* **Medium** (100-500 lines): chess, dijkstra, neural1, mao, rubik
* **Complex** (500-1500 lines): doom, minilight, pygasus, rubik
* **Very Complex** (> 1500 lines): c64 (3,332 lines), hq2x, othello3 (22,503 lines with auto-generated code)

## Learning from Examples

When writing code for Shed Skin, these examples serve as excellent references for:

1. **Type patterns**: How to structure code so Shed Skin can infer types
2. **Supported features**: What Python constructs work with Shed Skin
3. **Performance techniques**: How to write fast code
4. **Module usage**: How to use the 25+ supported standard library modules
5. **Extension modules**: How to create Python-importable modules

## Contributing Examples

If you have an interesting example that works with Shed Skin, please suggest it in the [Shedskin discussion group](https://groups.google.com/g/shedskin-discuss) or post an [issue](https://github.com/shedskin/shedskin/issues/new/choose) in the GitHub repository.