Wiktionary

spaceship

See also: space ship

English edit

 
A spaceship

Alternative forms edit

Etymology edit

Noun edit

spaceship (plural spaceships)

  1. (astronautics) A vehicle that flies through space.
  2. (cellular automata) A finite pattern that reappears after a certain number of generations in the same orientation but in a different position.
    • 1989 October 26, Richard Schroeppel, “Some recent Life results”, in comp.theory.cell-automata‎[1] (Usenet):
      The spaceships look like a row of threshers harvesting a field of wheat; the thickness in the direction of motion is only about 10 cells.
    • 2002, Richard Nowakowski, More Games of No Chance, page 433:
      We describe software that searches for spaceships in Conway's Game of Life and related two-dimensional cellular automata.
    • 2010, Andrew Adamatzky, Game of Life Cellular Automata, page 126:
      Synthesis of spaceship flotillas is even more complicated than synthesis of oscillators, since spaceships are like oscillators that move […]
  3. (programming) The operator <=> in certain programming languages, which compares two values and indicates whether the first is lesser than, greater than, or equal to the second.
    • 2012, Randal Schwartz, Brian Foy, Tom Phoenix, Intermediate Perl, page 142:
      If we reverse the positions of $a and $b, the spaceship will sort in the opposite order […]

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(vehicle):

(pattern):

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Further reading edit

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