Thanks, John!

I learned to program out of a book called "101 Games in BASIC". Life was one of them, but (being young at the time) I could never see the point of it. Later I revisited it and I know what you mean about interesting patterns -- it's fascinating what a few simple rules can yield.
zahid

>Hey Folks,
>
>Was reading a book the other day where they mentioned the old mathematical game of Life. This game was written by a mathematician in 1970 to demonstrate that a simple set of rules can generate complex and unpredicatable results over time.
>
>Over 20 years ago, I wrote an Apple program to run this simulation or game or whatever you want to call it. Sure enough, wondrous things happen over time if you start with interesting patterns.
>
>Anyhow, I wrote a Life application for VFP this morning and posted it here. It's called VFPLife. You can put this in the "Bag O Tricks" category: this application does nothing useful. However, you can spend hours and hours trying new patterns and seeing how many cycles it takes to population stasis or death or ... never-ending diversity?
>
>The penultimate nerd game.....ENJOY!