Pattern naming

Patterns in Conway's Game of Life and related cellular automata may be named in a variety of ways.

There are three ways to refer to a pattern:

• A name designates the pattern.
• A descriptions provides information about the pattern and its parameters.
• A code allows reconstruction of the pattern.

Proper names

Many patterns have proper names assigned to them, either by their discoverer of the Life community at large. Names are usually based on either the visual appearance of the pattern, its behavior, its parameters or other traits; examples include:

• Patterns named after their visual appearance: block, copperhead (resembling the head of a copperhead snake).
• Patterns named after their behavior: glider, boat maker.
• Patterns named after their parameters: pentadecathlon (period 15 oscillator).
• Patterns named after other traits: Quad pseudo-still life.

Composite patterns

Patterns composed of two or more named parts are often said to be on or at each other. The composite pattern can also be referred to as a tie, especially the two constituting objects are identical. Examples include:

• On: Figure eight on 36P22, Ship on long boat.
• At: Aircraft at cap, Beehive at loaf.
• Tie: Boat-tie, Boat-ship-tie

In some cases, a combination of two identical patterns is called a bi-pattern, or a mirrored pattern. Examples include:

• Bi-: Bi-pond, Bi-cap
• Mirrored: Mirrored dock

Infinite families

Main article: Long

Many patterns can be extended arbitrarily in a systematic manner; the members of the family are then referred to as long, very long, extra long etc.

Other infinite families defying easy description exist, e.g. lakes; these are largely unnamed.

Systematic names (descriptions)

Patterns may be given systematic names based on their behavior and/or traits.

Shuttles, loops and oscillators may be named according to their period; for example, the p26 glider shuttle, p42 glider shuttle and p50 glider shuttle are all glider shuttles of various periods.

Sawtooths are often named according to their minimum recurring population, e.g. sawtooth 177, sawtooth 201 and sawtooth 1212.

Unnamed patterns

Entirely unnamed patterns are referred to using a descriptor.

For oscillators, the format of the descripter is #p#. The first number denotes the smallest amount of cells in any generation; the second denotes the period. For spaceships, this is extended to #p#h#v#. The third and fourth the horizontal and vertical displacement of the ship, relative to its initial position.

In either case, objects that would ordinarily be assigned the same descriptor may be distinguished by appending a period and an index, e.g. 28P7.1 and 28P7.2.

Codes

Also see Category:File formats.

Various encodings for patterns exist.

• RLE is easy to encode and decode, but can grow fairly large, and does not uniquely identify a pattern.
• Extended Wechsler codes (apgcodes) uniquely identify a pattern, while also encoding its behavior in a given rule (assumed to be Conway Life unless otherwise specified).

Indices in pattern collections

Unnammed patterns can also be described by their indices in pattern collections; for example, the hat is object 9.1 on Pentadecathlon.com. For stamp collections such as jslife, the file the object is contained in and its position on the grid can be used.