mandelbrot Lua #6 program

-- The Computer Language Benchmarks Game
-- https://salsa.debian.org/benchmarksgame-team/benchmarksgame/
-- contributed by Mike Pall
-- modified by Rob Kendrick to be parallel
-- modified by Isaac Gouy

-- called with the following arguments on the command line;
-- 1: size of mandelbrot to generate
-- 2: number of children to spawn (defaults to 6, which works well on 4-way)
-- If this is a child, then there will be additional parameters;
-- 3: start row
-- 4: end row
--
-- Children buffer up their output and emit it to stdout when
-- finished, to avoid stalling due to a full pipe.

local width = tonumber(arg and arg[1]) or 100
local children = tonumber(arg and arg[2]) or 6
local srow = tonumber(arg and arg[3])
local erow = tonumber(arg and arg[4])

local height, wscale = width, 2/width
local m, limit2 = 50, 4.0
local write, char = io.write, string.char

if not srow then
   -- we are the parent process.  emit the header, and then spawn children
   
   local workunit = math.floor(width / (children + 1))
   local handles = { }
   
   write("P4\n", width, " ", height, "\n")
   
   children = children - 1
   
   for i = 0, children do
      local cs, ce
      
      if i == 0 then
         cs = 0
         ce = workunit
      elseif i == children then
         cs = (workunit * i) + 1
         ce = width - 1
      else
         cs = (workunit * i) + 1
         ce = cs + workunit - 1
      end
      
      handles[i + 1] = io.popen(("%s %s %d %d %d %d"):format(
         arg[-1], arg[0], width, children + 1, cs, ce))
   end
   
   -- collect answers, and emit
   for i = 0, children do
      write(handles[i + 1]:read "*a")
   end
   
else
   -- we are a child process.  do the work allocated to us.
   local obuff = { }
   for y=srow,erow do
     local Ci = 2*y / height - 1
     for xb=0,width-1,8 do
      local bits = 0
      local xbb = xb+7
      for x=xb,xbb < width and xbb or width-1 do
        bits = bits + bits
        local Zr, Zi, Zrq, Ziq = 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0
        local Cr = x * wscale - 1.5
        for i=1,m do
         local Zri = Zr*Zi
         Zr = Zrq - Ziq + Cr
         Zi = Zri + Zri + Ci
         Zrq = Zr*Zr
         Ziq = Zi*Zi
         if Zrq + Ziq > limit2 then
           bits = bits + 1
           break
         end
        end
      end
      if xbb >= width then
        for x=width,xbb do bits = bits + bits + 1 end
      end
      obuff[#obuff + 1] = char(255 - bits)
     end
   end
   
   write(table.concat(obuff))
end
    

NOTES:
64-bit Ubuntu quad core
Lua 5.4.6  Copyright (C) 
1994-2023 Lua.org, PUC-Rio


 Sun, 03 Mar 2024 05:20:06 GMT

COMMAND LINE:
 /opt/src/lua-5.4.6/install/bin/lua  mandelbrot.lua-6.lua 16000

(BINARY) PROGRAM OUTPUT NOT SHOWN