# Elementary CA generator for terminal

[![crates.io](https://img.shields.io/crates/v/ca-term.svg)](https://crates.io/crates/ca-term)


This is a cli tool that can show all elementary Cellular Automata on a text based terminal. More details about elementary cellular automata here: https://mathworld.wolfram.com/ElementaryCellularAutomaton.html.

![Example](img/rule30_ex.png)

It displays the CA on the terminal with whatever character you pass in ascii or unicode. If you pass a unicode character just one unicode code point is allowed.


Help from the command itself is, I think, self-explanatory:

```
ca-term 0.0.4
Author: est357
Description: Cellular automata for terminal

USAGE:
    ca-term [OPTIONS]

FLAGS:
    -h, --help       Prints help information
    -V, --version    Prints version information

OPTIONS:
    -c, --character <display_character>
            The character with which it will be drawn. Just 1 character. [default: ◼]

    -g, --generations <generations>                  How many lines it should generate. Number value. [default: 100]
    -b, --init_bit <initial_bit>
            Initial bit 1 position. Between 0 and width value. Number value. [default: 103]

    -i, --interval <interval_between_generations>
            Time interval in us to wait bewtween generations. Number value. [default: 200000]

    -r, --rule <rule>
            The CA rule number according to https://mathworld.wolfram.com/ElementaryCellularAutomaton.html. Number
            value. [default: 30]
    -w, --width <width>
            No of columns of the array, should match terminal width for best results. Number value. [default: 206]


```

## Installation

The binary from "Releases/ca-term-\<version\>-x86_64-unknown-linux-musl.tar.gz" should work on most linux distributions. It can also be installed with cargo:
```
cargo install ca-term
```

### Misc

By default it disables line wrap. Usual signals are handled but if you, for example, `kill -9` the process, you will end up with unwrapped lines in the terminal.

To disable/enable line wrap in your terminal do this:
```
# Disable line wrap
tput rmam

# Enable line wrap
tput smam
```
If you want you can generate a image like this:
```
ca-term -g 250 -b 250 -w 500 | pango-view --font=mono -qo rule30_gen1.png /dev/stdin
```

It can also be used as a seed for sha256 private key from which a crypto currency address (like ETH,BTC) can be generated.