ConwayLife.com

I hear a lot about new search programs being developed that are more efficient than existing ones. What programs would now be considered obsolete?

EDIT: The main search program I am interested in is WLS.

WLS is far from obsolete. Here are some of the things I think it does well:

• Possibly still the fastest for finding diagonal spaceships (not sure how ikpx compares)
• Probably still the best at building branching ships
• Possibly the fastest for finding short ships
• Great for finding low and mid period sparkers and oscillator supports (most new programs have been spaceship searchers)
• Faster than JLS, although it lacks some useful JLS features

Edit: I'm not sure if any programs have been made completely obsolete recently. You just need to know exactly what the ideal program is for your purposes.

I would say afind is pretty dead, but I'm not sure it was ever alive. That was before I was around here at least.

What about lifesrc-3.8?

AforAmpere wrote: January 27th, 2020, 12:31 am I would say afind is pretty dead, but I'm not sure it was ever alive. That was before I was around here at least.

It is said that afind can search for knightships, but I doubt if anyone has succesfully find such a ship.

I'm honestly not sure that there's a good reason to declare any programs obsolete. If you don't know what program to use for a search, you are better off asking "what's the best?" rather than "what's obsolete?".

Bullet51 wrote: January 27th, 2020, 12:49 am What about lifesrc-3.8?

lifesrc is platform independent and (I think) faster than JLS, so it could be useful. However, I don't think anyone uses it due to the difficulty of setting up searches.

AforAmpere wrote: January 27th, 2020, 12:31 am I would say afind is pretty dead, but I'm not sure it was ever alive.

afind could do a short-wide breadth first search, which I don't recall any other programs being capable of. I don't know if ikpx or any others have this capability. afind is probably only useful for other CA at this point.

Bullet51 wrote: January 27th, 2020, 12:49 am It is said that afind can search for knightships, but I doubt if anyone has succesfully find such a ship.

Indeed, I recall that I used it to look for p5 knightships in Life-like CA back in the day and got some nice partial results. I never found any complete ships, but Josh Ball did (although I think he used WLS). These days ikpx is probably better suited for this task.

Anyway, lifesrc and afind haven't been made any more obsolete in recent years than they already were.