Without using numbers, get the highest salary you can. But don't exaggerate!

Question

As I'm applying for some jobs whose job advert doesn't state the salary, I imagined a particularly evil interviewer that would give the candidate the possibility to decide their own salary ...by "golfing" it!

So it goes simply like that:

Without using numbers, write a code that outputs the annual salary you'd like to be offered.

However, being able to write concise code is a cornerstone of this company. So they have implemented a very tight seniority ladder where

employers that write code that is b bytes long can earn a maximum of ($1'000'000) · b^−0.75.

we are looking at (these are the integer parts, just for display reasons):

   1 byte  �� $1'000'000       15 bytes → $131'199
   2 bytes →   $594'603       20 bytes → $105'737
   3 bytes →   $438'691       30 bytes →  $78'011
   4 bytes →   $353'553       40 bytes →  $62'871
  10 bytes →   $177'827       50 bytes →  $53'182

The challenge

Write a program or function that takes no input and outputs a text containing a dollar sign ($, U+0024) and a decimal representation of a number (integer or real).

• Your code cannot contain the characters 0123456789.

In the output:

• There may optionally be a single space between the dollar sign and the number.

• Trailing and leading white spaces and new lines are acceptable, but any other output is forbidden.

• The number must be expressed as a decimal number using only the characters 0123456789.. This excludes the use of scientific notation.

• Any number of decimal places are allowed.

An entry is valid if the value it outputs is not greater than ($1'000'000) · b^−0.75, where b is the byte length of the source code.

Example output (the quotes should not be output)

"$ 428000"            good if code is not longer than 3 bytes
"$321023.32"          good if code is not longer than 4 bytes
"  $ 22155.0"         good if code is not longer than 160 bytes
"$ 92367.15 \n"       good if code is not longer than 23 bytes
"300000 $"            bad
" lorem $ 550612.89"  bad
"£109824"             bad
"$ -273256.21"        bad
"$2.448E5"            bad

The score

The value you output is your score! (Highest salary wins, of course.)

---

Leaderboard

Here is a Stack Snippet to generate both a regular leaderboard and an overview of winners by language.

To make sure that your answer shows up, please start your answer with a headline, using the following Markdown template:

# Language Name, $X (Y bytes)

where X is your salary and Y is the size of your submission. (The Y bytes can be anywhere in your answer.) If you improve your score, you can keep old scores in the headline, by striking them through. For instance:

# Ruby, <s>$111111.111... (18 bytes)</s> <s>$111999 (17 bytes)</s> $123456 (16 bytes)

You can also make the language name a link, which will then show up in the leaderboard snippet:

# [><>](http://esolangs.org/wiki/Fish), $126,126 (13 bytes)

var QUESTION_ID=171168,OVERRIDE_USER=77736;function answersUrl(e){return"https://api.stackexchange.com/2.2/questions/"+QUESTION_ID+"/answers?page="+e+"&pagesize=100&order=desc&sort=creation&site=codegolf&filter="+ANSWER_FILTER}function commentUrl(e,s){return"https://api.stackexchange.com/2.2/answers/"+s.join(";")+"/comments?page="+e+"&pagesize=100&order=desc&sort=creation&site=codegolf&filter="+COMMENT_FILTER}function getAnswers(){jQuery.ajax({url:answersUrl(answer_page++),method:"get",dataType:"jsonp",crossDomain:!0,success:function(e){answers.push.apply(answers,e.items),answers_hash=[],answer_ids=[],e.items.forEach(function(e){e.comments=[];var s=+e.share_link.match(/\d+/);answer_ids.push(s),answers_hash[s]=e}),e.has_more||(more_answers=!1),comment_page=1,getComments()}})}function getComments(){jQuery.ajax({url:commentUrl(comment_page++,answer_ids),method:"get",dataType:"jsonp",crossDomain:!0,success:function(e){e.items.forEach(function(e){e.owner.user_id===OVERRIDE_USER&&answers_hash[e.post_id].comments.push(e)}),e.has_more?getComments():more_answers?getAnswers():process()}})}function getAuthorName(e){return e.owner.display_name}function process(){var e=[];answers.forEach(function(s){var r=s.body.replace(/<(s|strike)>.*?<\/\1>/g,"");s.comments.forEach(function(e){OVERRIDE_REG.test(e.body)&&(r="<h1>"+e.body.replace(OVERRIDE_REG,"")+"</h1>")});var a1=r.match(SCORE_REG),a2=r.match(LANG_REG),a3=r.match(BYTES_REG);a1&&a2&&e.push({user:getAuthorName(s),size:a3?+a3[1]:0,score:+a1[1].replace(/[^\d.]/g,""),lang:a2[1],rawlang:(/<a/.test(a2[1])?jQuery(a2[1]).text():a2[1]).toLowerCase(),link:s.share_link})}),e.sort(function(e,s){var r=e.score,a=s.score;return a-r});var s={},r=1,a=null,n=1;e.forEach(function(e){e.score!=a&&(n=r),a=e.score,++r;var t=jQuery("#answer-template").html();t=t.replace("{{PLACE}}",n+".").replace("{{NAME}}",e.user).replace("{{LANGUAGE}}",e.lang).replace("{{SCORE}}","$"+e.score.toFixed(2)).replace("{{SIZE}}",e.size||"?").replace("{{LINK}}",e.link),t=jQuery(t),jQuery("#answers").append(t);s[e.rawlang]=s[e.rawlang]||e});var t=[];for(var o in s)s.hasOwnProperty(o)&&t.push(s[o]);t.sort(function(e,s){var r=e.rawlang,a=s.rawlang;return r>a?1:r<a?-1:0});for(var c=0;c<t.length;++c){var i=jQuery("#language-template").html(),o=t[c];i=i.replace("{{LANGUAGE}}",o.lang).replace("{{NAME}}",o.user).replace("{{SCORE}}","$"+o.score.toFixed(2)).replace("{{SIZE}}",o.size||"?").replace("{{LINK}}",o.link),i=jQuery(i),jQuery("#languages").append(i)}}var ANSWER_FILTER="!t)IWYnsLAZle2tQ3KqrVveCRJfxcRLe",COMMENT_FILTER="!)Q2B_A2kjfAiU78X(md6BoYk",answers=[],answers_hash,answer_ids,answer_page=1,more_answers=!0,comment_page;getAnswers();var LANG_REG=/<h\d>\s*((?:[^\n,](?!\s*\(?\d+\s*bytes))*[^\s,:-])/,BYTES_REG=/(\d+)\s*(?:<a[^>]+>|<\/a>)?\s*bytes/i,SCORE_REG=/\$\s*([\d',]+\.?\d*)/,OVERRIDE_REG=/^Override\s*header:\s*/i;

body{text-align:left!important}#answer-list,#language-list{padding:10px;width:520px;float:left}table thead{font-weight:700}table td{padding:5px}

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="//cdn.sstatic.net/codegolf/all.css?v=83c949450c8b"> <div id="answer-list"> <h2>Leaderboard</h2> <table class="answer-list"> <thead> <tr><td></td><td>Author</td><td>Language</td><td>Score</td><td>Size</td></tr></thead> <tbody id="answers"> </tbody> </table> </div><div id="language-list"> <h2>Winners by Language</h2> <table class="language-list"> <thead> <tr><td>Language</td><td>User</td><td>Score</td><td>Size</td></tr></thead> <tbody id="languages"> </tbody> </table> </div><table style="display: none"> <tbody id="answer-template"> <tr><td>{{PLACE}}</td><td>{{NAME}}</td><td>{{LANGUAGE}}</td><td>{{SCORE}}</td><td>{{SIZE}}</td><td><a href="{{LINK}}">Link</a></td></tr></tbody> </table> <table style="display: none"> <tbody id="language-template"> <tr><td>{{LANGUAGE}}</td><td>{{NAME}}</td><td>{{SCORE}}</td><td>{{SIZE}}</td><td><a href="{{LINK}}">Link</a></td></tr></tbody> </table>

---

Edit: (rounded) maximum allowed score per byte count, for a quicker reference - text here:

Answer 1

Befunge-98 (PyFunge), 8 bytes, $209728

$",**.q:

Try it online!

The character : has been computed using the following method:

>>> chr(int((1_000_000 * 8 ** -0.75) / (ord(' ') * ord('q'))))
':'

Using @ and f also works but gives only $208896.

Answer 2

Befunge-93, 9 bytes, $192448

a>$",**.@

Try it online!

Outputs $192448, just two dollars and nine cents short of the maximum. This even works as a polyglot with proper implementations of Befunge-98, where it doesn't even have to throw up an unrecognised instruction error!

Explanation:

a>$        Basically no-ops
   "       Wrapping string that pushes the code and a lot of spaces to the stack
    ,      Print the $
     **    Multiply the byte values of a, > and a space
           62*97*32 = 192448
       .@  Print the number and terminate

Answer 3

Cubix, $155088 (12 bytes)

*Ouo'ე'$/@

Try it online!

An interesting problem, was hoping to get this down to 7 or 8 bytes, but it proved difficult. Pushes the ე and $ characters to the stack, outputs the $, multiples top of stack, outputs the number and halts. Still hoping to find a lower byte option

Answer 4

Excel VBA - 22 Bytes, $97336

?"$"&Asc(".")^Asc("")

How it works

? - Print in immediate
 "$" - $ character
 asc(".") = 46
 Asc("") = 3
  46 ^ 3 = 97336

Answer 5

PowerShell 5.1, $77126 $85184 $101101 $105105, 25 21 20 Bytes

"$"+($x=+'i'[""])+$x

or

+'i'['']|%{"$ $_$_"}

or

$x=+'i'[''];"`$$x$x"

^{+10k thanks to AdmBorkBork
+16k thanks to Mazzy
+4k thanks to Mazzy again
+2 solutions thanks to Mazzy, the absolute Maddest Lad}

With a little help, we hit the 100k mark. We have "i" index into itself to do some cheeky casting and then concats that to itself.

Answer 6

Hexagony, 12 bytes, $122122

D{y@!!<'*;z/

Try it online!

Answer 7

Jelly, 5 bytes, $256'256

”$¹⁹⁹

Try it online!

How it works

”$¹⁹⁹  Main link. No arguments.

”$     Set the left argument and the return value to '$'.
  ¹    Apply the identity function. This allows implicit printing.
   ⁹   Set the return value to 256.
       Since this discards the previous return value ('$'), it is printed implicitly.
    ⁹  Set the return value to 256.
       Since this discards the previous return value (256), it is printed implicitly.
       (implicit) Print the last return value (256).

Answer 8

Perl 6, 11 bytes, $165,000 10 bytes, $177,147 12 bytes, $150,000

'$'~㉝*ↁ

'$'~۳¹¹

{'$'~۳*ↇ}

Try it online!

The Unicode characters ㉝ (CIRCLED NUMBER THIRTY THREE) and ↁ (ROMAN NUMERAL FIVE THOUSAND) conveniently evaluate to their Unicode values in numeric expressions.

۳ is the Unicode character EXTENDED ARABIC-INDIC DIGIT THREE, which conveniently evaluates to its Unicode value of 3 in numeric expressions. That 3 is raised to the eleventh power by following it with two superscript ones.

Answer 9

><>, 7 bytes, $232110

'onnè$

Try it online!

Explanation (simple):

'onnè$
'      : Start putting chars onto the stack.
 o     : Print the stack top
  nn   : Print the stack top as numbers
    è$ : Errors the program

Answer 10

Haskell, $99999 (15 bytes)

pred<$>"%:::::"

Try it online!

Answer 11

Swift, $131072 (13 bytes)

"$\(MAXPHYS)"

In Swift Playground it prints "$131072"

Answer 12

APL $130189.4947846055 (18 15 bytes, 10 9 characters)

Thanks to @Ross Presser for pointing out the byte length and for saving a character. Byte length determined using Python's len function.

'$',!○*≡⍬
=> $ 130189.4947846055

Can be run on repl or offline if you have an APL interpreter e.g. NodeJS + NGN APL.

The maximum for the length is $177827.9.

How it works

⍬ is the empty vector and the single argument form of ≡ obtains the depth of the argument (number of nested arrays, effectively). This can be used to obtain the number 1 in order to perform further math operations, as a vector containing only scalars (or nothing at all) has depth 1.

!○* are the factorial, pi times X, and e^x functions, respectively. APL operates right-to-left, so the value 1 is passed to these functions RTL and this expression computes (pi * e)!.

Then the dollar sign must be prepended by concatenating (,) the string value with the computed value.

Note: I did this mostly by trial and error. Often, using exponentiation after multiplication resulted in values that were way too large for the byte count. There might be a more optimal combination of operators.

Answer 13

Keg, $298298 (5 Bytes)

\$Ī:

Fixed my answer now so it actually fits within the rules. Ī is two bytes so this is very close to the max I can get for this byte count.

How it works

\$   Pushes $ to the stack, has to be escaped since $ is the swap instruction in Keg
Ī  Pushes the unicode value of this character, which is 298
:  Duplicates the top value of the stack, which is 298
End of programme prints entire stack, resulting in $298298

Answer 14

T-SQL, $65,025 $72,614 (33 bytes)

PRINT CONCAT('$',CHECKSUM('
ßÝ'))                                       --  $72614,   33 bytes

Just in case that doesn't display or copy correctly, the string is CHAR(10) + CHAR(223) + CHAR(221), so does not contain any multi-byte characters.

I've verified CHECKSUM produces this same result in both SQL 2017 and SQL 2012; it is unlikely but possible that other versions might produce different values (since the exact CHECKSUM mechanism is unpublished).

To find this I had to evaluate the CHECKSUM of all possible 3-character strings from CHAR(9) (tab) to CHAR(255). Good thing that's easy enough to do in SQL with a self-join from a number table.

Some of my prior attempts:

PRINT CONCAT('$',CHECKSUM(']èÆ'))           --  $72562,   33 bytes
PRINT CONCAT('$',SQUARE(ASCII('ÿ')))        --  $65025,   36 bytes
PRINT CONCAT('$',PI()*EXP(PI()*PI()))       --  $60738.6, 37 bytes

Note that any of these can alternately be written, with no loss of bytes, as:

PRINT FORMAT(CHECKSUM(']èÆ'),'C')           --  $72,562.00  33 bytes

The latter has a more nicely formatted output, but it is unclear whether the comma is allowed by the rules.

Answer 15

Python (28 bytes; $15876)

print('$',ord('~')*ord('~'))

Try it online!

---

This is my first code golf answer. :)

Answer 16

vemf, $200,000 (7 bytes) $210,000 (8 bytes)

+1 byte but also +$10,000 thanks to Julian

hhg+ª;`$

try it online

Explanation

     ;   ' procatenate (reverse concatenate)
    ª    '   string representation of
hhg+     '     210,000 (as 100,000+100,000+10,000)
         ' and
      `  '   character literal
       $ '     dollar sign

Answer 17

Brain-Flak, $55555

([(((()()()()){}){}())](((((({})({}()){}))))))

Try it online!

Brain-Flak with -r flag, $57777

((((((((()()()()){}){}())(({}()){}))()()))))

Try it online!

Answer 18

Java

program, 73 bytes, $40033 (of max 40041.67)

interface G{static void main(String[]a){System.out.print("$"+'+'*'Σ');}}

Explanation

It uses the product of the ascii character + (43) with the greek unicode character Σ (931).

Lambda, 35 bytes, $69388 (of max 69494.27)

()->System.out.print("$"+'L'*'Α');

Answer 19

><>, 8 bytes, $210196

'o+n+|V$

Try it online!

Explanation:

'         Push the rest of the code to the stack
 o        Print the $
  +n      Add the top two and print as a number (210)
   n+|    Add the top three and print as a number (196)
 o+       Error as the stack runs out

Answer 20

PHP, 18 bytes, $114431

This was actually a very quick challenge, but fun!

$<?=ppuurp^AAAAAA;

Simply writes $114431 (excluding the warnings).

Tricks I've used:

• PHP will output anything outside it's opening and closing tag (saves 3 bytes vs '$'.[...])
• The opening tag <?= has the same effect as <?php echo [....]; (saves 8 bytes)
• You don't need to use quotes for "strings" that don't have spaces or start with numbers.
  This makes it so PHP parses it as a constant.
  Non-existing constants are converted to string (ex. AAAAAA is the same as "AAAAAA").
  (saves 4 bytes - 2 bytes per "string")
• You don't really need the closing tag, and PHP advices you to not include it if it is a page that shouldn't have output.
  (Check https://stackoverflow.com/a/19953547/2729937 for more).

Answer 21

Pascal (FPC), $72089

33 bytes

begin write('$',$AFFFF div$A)end.

Try it online!

Found by playing with arithmetics and hexadecimal constants. See below for more interesting answers.

---

Pascal (FPC), $65526

37 bytes

var x:word=-$A;begin write('$',x)end.

Try it online!

Thanks to @JonathanAllan for reminding me of initialization in declaration, it shortened my new approach.

No way Brain-Flak programmer can have bigger salary!

$A is hexadecimal constant 10. Variables of type word have values in range 0..65535, so initializing it with -10 gives 65526 instead (and a range check warning).

---

Pascal (FPC), $54872

47 bytes

begin write('$',ord('&')*ord('&')*ord('&'))end.

Try it online!

Answer 22

Bubblegum, $260847 (6 bytes)

00000000: 03b3 c759 0bf8                           ...Y..

Try it online!

Answer 23

dc, $177147 (9 bytes)

[$]nAvB^n

Try it online!

\$\lfloor\sqrt{10}\rfloor^{11}\$.

Answer 24

Shakespeare Programming Language, $18000 (207 205 bytes)

,.Ajax,.Ford,.Act I:.Scene I:.[Enter Ajax and Ford]Ajax:You be the square oftwice the sum ofa cat a big cat.Speak thy.You cat.Open heart.You be the cube oftwice twice the sum ofyou a big big cat.Open heart

Try it online!

This language made this challenge simultaneously easy and hard. On one hand, there already are no numbers in the source code. On the other hand, the program size can get VERY long (the shortest header is 51 bytes, meaning I'm already out $947601.07!).

Salary printed: $18000

Maximum salary: $18457.99 (rounded)

Answer 25

PowerShell, $1, 17 bytes

Owner's salary:

"$"+[bigint]::One

Try it online!

Answer 26

LOLCODE 1.2, 19 77 Bytes ($38100)

HAI 1.2
    VISIBLE "$:[DIGIT THREE]:[DIGIT EIGHT]:[DIGIT ONE]:[DIGIT ZERO]:[DIGIT ZERO]"
KTHXBYE

Try it online!

The header HAI 1.2 and footer KTHXBYE are always required so not included in final byte count.

LOLCODE lacks a way to directly cast a char literal to a number, but you CAN give it a unicode normative name and it returns that unicode character. Changing the number name frequently changed the byte count so this was a bit tricky but this worked out fine :)

^{(Also had brainfart and forgot including 0123456789 wasn't allowed hence the 19 → 77. ^^;)}

Answer 27

GolfScript, $210210 (8 bytes)

"$i").+.

Try it online!

"$i"     # Push this string
    )    # Separate last char and parse it to an integer, in this case it's 105
     .+  # Add it to itself
       . # Copy top of stack

In the end everything in the stack is concatenated. This is only $ 14.10 under the limit.

Answer 28

Hexagony, 15 bytes, $125125

j{F)))<'-;z/@!!

   j { F
  ) ) ) <
 ' - ; z /
  @ ! ! .
   . . .

I originally had an answer similar to @user202729, but I realized that I could add 3 increments ")" to z in order to make it 125 and it kept it under 16 bytes ($125000 max).

Try it online!

Answer 29

gvm (commit 2612106) bytecode, 7 bytes ($232255)

░$áΦá └

program shown in cp 437 encoding. It seems I can't paste a non-breaking space correctly here :( (ff in cp-437, U+00a0 in unicode) -- the space in the code should be one.

Output:

> ./gvm salary.bin
$232255

Hexdump:

> hexdump -C salary.bin
00000000  b0 24 a0 e8 a0 ff c0                              |.$.....|
00000007

Disassembled:

c:0100  b0 24       WCH #'$'    ; write character $
c:0102  a0 e8       WUD #$e8    ; write unsigned byte $e8 (232)
c:0104  a0 ff       WUD #$ff    ; write unsigned byte $ff (255)
c:0106  c0          HLT         ; terminate

---

This is a pre-alpha version of a virtual machine I'm working on -- hope this is still allowed, the commit that correctly executes this code is from yesterday :)

Answer 30

Charcoal, 6 bytes, $252525

$׳��²⁵

Try it online! Link is to verbose version of code. Works by casting the numeric constant 25 to string and repeating it 3 times. The best Charcoal can do in 5 bytes is $222222:

$×⁶Ｉ²

Try it online! Link is to verbose version of code.